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.

Help Is On Its Way

                                            BREAKING NEWS AT GARDEN N' GROW

We have some very sad news......today was the last Garden N Grow. We are all very sad. But you will still be able to pick stuff from your garden...up until labor day.

Today's lesson was about being scientists. We learned the scientific method. Oh I almost forgot Ms. Linda tought us today.

Scientist

We found juvenile squash bugs today. Here is a picture taken by one of the staff of Garden N Grow.

juvenile squash bugs

The Garden N Grow kids made thank you cards for the people at Fairview Christian Church,

Well that time has come we will see some of you next year.

This is Mariah H. signing off of Garden N' Grow News.

Trading Traits

Everyone enjoyed the garden party Saturday. Parents and relatives were all impressed with the work the young gardeners have done in the gardens.

Marina

Sway

Garden Party

Monday's class was "Trading Traits"  Ms Kirsten taught the class how plants can be changed or improved through selection, breeding, mutation and genetic engineering.  The students created their own monster plants out of fruits and vegetables.

What's it Worth

                                              Now it's time for Garden N Grow News!

We were assaulted by swarms of cucumber beetles when we walked through the garden this morning. We captured many of them with duct tape. Other than that the gardens look awesome!We found thousands (really? thousands?) of tiny squash bug and cucumber beetle eggs on one zucchini plant but don't worry we did our best to remove them.

In other news some deer are eating our beans. Here is a picture of the damage.

Deer salad bar

Todays lesson was called "What's It Worth".  We weighed today's harvest, then we looked through grocery store ads to find prices.  Then we calculated how much our harvest was worth.  Harvest times unit cost = how much we saved by growing our own!  We harvested several dollars worth of produce today.

Checking the store ads

For the craft today we made visors out of craft foam, decorated with stickers and colored markers. Here is Duncan in his visor coming out of the classroom.

Duncan in his visor