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Today the young gardeners learned about photosynthesis. They learned about the formula and a bunch of big words like chlorophyl and chloroplast. We had a lot of produce, mostly peppers. In other news we found more squash bug eggs and a mushroom in the lasagna garden.

We had time for 2 crafts today so we made visors and plant markers. Our young gardeners are very creative.

 

 

Posted by Mariah, young gardener, year 2

Grow, Grow, Grow Your Beans

It was hot and dry in the gardens today.  The young gardeners found some squash bug eggs.

in the garden

 
The students learned about the "ingredients" needed to grow and produce vegetables - light, water, nutrients and air. They designed experiments to see the results of altering the ingredients. We'll check their beans in two weeks to see how well they grew.

Coddle those Cotyls

Today the young gardeners learned all about seeds - how they are dispersed and how they grow.  They got to see the germination process in bean seeds soaked in water, and they learned to identify the five parts of a bean seed.  They looked at the inside of the beans with hand lenses to see the roots (radical) forming and tiny leaves of the embryo of the bean seed called cotyledons.

Out in the garden everyone pitched in to weed and water.  Our young students found these two stages of a lady beetle - beneficial insects.

Lady Beetle Pupa

Lady Beetle Larva
 

Lasagna Gardening

Lasagna Gardening mimics the forest floor, with lots of different layers of carbon and nitrogen (think brown and green).  Lasagna gardening is an easy way to plant a garden in your yard without tilling.

Today the young gardeners created a Lasagna Garden out of newspaper, grass clippings, dried leaves, and manure.

Seed or Weed: Stay or Go?

What is a weed?  It is a plant growing in the wrong place.

Today the students learned the importance of keeping weeds out of their gardens.  The weeds compete with their plants for water and nutrients.  They will be doing a lot of weeding this summer!

They also learned that mulch can help keeps weeds down, and can also hold in the moisture.  Mulch can be straw, wood chips, dried grass clippings, old leaves, even newspaper!


The class learned how to identify some common weeds.

What are these weeds?  Somone sneezed!

The Three Sisters

Today's lesson was about companion planting, and the beneficial relationship among the three plants in the Three Sisters - corn, beans and squash.

Here are the tepees we used to plant the Three Sisters. 

It's actually been dry enough that the young gardeners had to water the new plantings today

Planting 1, 2, 3

Today we learned the correct way to plant.  We learned about row spacing and depth, direct seeding and transplants.  Then we planted the rest of the gardens.  We've had a lot of rain, so the young gardeners got muddy again!

Mr Marlin teaching about row spacing





Garden N Grow Gardeners

 



Growing Together

Another year of Garden N Grow, and another great group of young gardeners!

The young gardeners are going to learn all about gardening, from how to plant and care for their gardens to harvesting and preservation, pests and disease and how plants grow. 

We got aquainted today, and the students picked their garden plots.  We went ahead and planted some of the gardens today since we've had two rain free days in a row.  It was muddy still, and the gardeners got muddy too!

Muddy Gardeners



 

Newly planted garden

The gardeners learned about hunger - that there are people in the world - and in their own community - who don't have enough to eat.  Hopefully they'll have a better appreciation for the food they are growing this summer.