Sand, Silt or Clay

Today while weeding and watering, we found a squash bug and a spotted cucumber beetle. This is what they look like. We squished the bugs we found in our garden!

Squash bug

Spotted cucumber beetle

The young gardeners looked at diffrent types of soil to see the diffrence in soil texture and particle size. They did an experiment with soil. They took diffrent types of soil and put them in a bottle with detergent and water and shook it. They will leave it undisturbed for a few days then check to see if the layers seperated.

Grow Grow Grow your Beans

Today we devised experiments with beans and different growing conditions. In two weeks we will check the results to see if our hypotheses are correct.

We planted our signs in our gardens. Here are the young gardeners standing with their signs.

Russell

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Duncan

Jazz

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Megan

Angelina

Mariah

Sway

Marcus

Marina

Caleb

Josh

Lily

Coddle Those Cotyls

The gardens received some much needed rain last night.  Even with the wet ground, we were able to do some light weeding.  Jazz found a spotted cucumber beetle, so we inspected all the plants for more bugs, but didn't find any.  Here's what we did find.

Something has nibbled on Mariah's and Duncan's pepper plant!

Sun Scald on Jazz's bean leaves

Sway's squash blossom

Ms Debbie taught the class how seeds germinate using beans that were soaked in water.  We split open the beans that had sprouted and saw the tiny plants inside the beans!

Weed Or Seed

Today we learned about weeds. A weed is any plant you do not want in your garden. Weeds choke your plants and they fight for nutrients and water. Ms. Cass sent the young gardeners on a scavenger hunt looking for specific weeds like bindweed, dandelion, crabgrass and fox tail. 

In this picture we are watering and weeding our garden.

Afterwards we went inside for a craft with Ms. Ty. We painted signs to identify our gardens.

This post created by Mariah, age 11.

Lasagna Gardening

We got a big pile of mulch from KCPL and today we spread it on the garden paths.

Ms. Sue taught us about lasagna gardening. Thats where you create a garden out of newspapers, grass clippings, manure (carbon and nitrogen). Here Ms. Sue and Ms. Cass are demonstrating while Ms. Ty and Mr. Charles look on. In the next picture the young gardeners are creating their own shoebox lasagna gardens.

Mariah harvested our first pepper from her and Duncan's garden. It weighed 1/2 of an ounce.

The Three Sisters - Companion Planting

Today the class learned about companion planting, where specific plants are placed near each other so that each one benefits from the others.  The Native Americans used companion planting.

We planted corn, beans and squash.  The corn will provide a natural trellis for the beans.  The squash leaves will shade the ground to prevent moisture loss, and bacteria on the roots of bean plants provides nitrogen for the other plants.

Planting 1,2,3

Today the young gardeners learned how to plant their gardens.  They learned about growing plants from seed and from transplants.  Then we planted our gardens.  We were so busy planting that we forgot to take pictures!  Here's a couple we did manage to snap.  Here's Mariah and Angelina with the scarecrow that Miss Cass made.  All the gardeners got to sign the scarecrow!

Here's a picture of the Garden N Grow sign.  We have already planted our gardens. You can see a couple of small plants in the foreground.

Growing Together

This was our first session of 2012 for Garden N Grow - Gladstone.  We have 12 young gardeners this year!  Here they are learning about hunger - how some people don't have enough to eat.

We'll be planting the gardens on Thursday.  Today the students found out what type of garden each of them will plant, and picked their garden plots. 

Holiday Garden - Red tomatos, green bell peppers, green bush beans, hot red peppers and okra - Mariah and Duncan sharing a plot and Marina and Marcus gardening together (sharing the weeding chores later this season!)

Weird Garden - Grape tomatos, sunburst squash, purple bell pepper, eight-ball zucchini and royal burgandy beans - Megan and Angelina will each plant a Weird garden.

Russell and Jazz are planting Relish Tray Gardens - cucumbers, cherry tomatos, hot red peppers, bush beans and okra.

Salsa Gardens are being planted by Caleb and Lily - three kinds of tomatos, peppers, onions, cilantro and zucchini.

The Sunshine Gardens - Sway and Joshua - contains banana peppers red tomatos, wax yellow beans, green onions and yellow summer squash.