Garden Details
Garden Details
Our Botany club winter sowed vegetables, herbs and some flowers and started its own small garden garden outside the teachers lounge.
As a special way to share our garden, each week this past spring we randomly selected two teachers for the club’s U-Pick & Plant Drawing. Winners are invited to pick their own fresh produce from our garden bed and take home a vegetable or flower plant started by our club members. The garden is maintained over the summer so that the club can continue to share the bounty of tomatoes, peppers, eggplant and herbs when students and teachers return in August.
Garden Practices
Garden Practices
Students took ownership of an existing raised bed. They weeded it, amended the soil, secured a weed sheet and planted vegetables and herbs they started from seeds. Throughout the spring they weeded and watered the garden. Students drilled holes in a donated hose and capped it to make a soaker hose for the garden. The club collected eggshells, crushed them, and added them to the soil when they planted the tomato and pepper plants. We plan to plant more lettuce and cool vegetables in the fall.
Tomatoes, jalapeno peppers, bell peppers, arugula, romaine lettuce, buttercrunch lettuce, eggplant, broccoli, parsley, basil, mint, red onions. In addition, we planted a few marigold and nasturtium plants. We have potatoes growing in a separate container.
The students meet during lunch every Tuesday and after school on the second Tuesday of the month. Additional afterschool meetings are held if needed to work on the garden.
Teachers and staff are encouraged to bring in clean, dried eggshells also to help fertilize the soil. As mentioned previously, the club selects two teachers weekly for the club’s U-Pick & Plant Drawing. Winners are invited to pick their own fresh produce from our garden bed and take home a vegetable or flower plant started by our club members.
In addition, the club has secured a dual compost tumbler and plans to start composting in the fall.
Additional Information
Additional Information
Funding is a challenge. The club is not provided a budget and students do not have pay to join the club.
And the deer have discovered our garden, so we need to purchase fence panels that can be removed easily so we can access the garden.
Ideas to help us persuade administration to let us expand our garden.
Club members are proud of their green thumbs and teachers love supporting our club and picking some fresh produce or bringing home a plant the club started from seed.
I loved it when a student said they had lettuce from the garden on their tacos for dinner. And I love just listening to them talk to each other while working in the garden.
