On Wednesday we loaded up our wheelbarrows with mulch and walked them over to Gateway Middle School, to work with their Garden class in their small garden. It was the first time our two groups met, and we hope to work together again soon! See the photo below of that fabulous day.
It was a busy week in the garden with lots of activities and improvements. On Saturday our monthly Garden Community Day brought a handful of neighbors and students together to accomplish a lot of little and big tasks, including power washing our greenhouse and installing a solar-powered USB charging station, which we announced to the whole school on Monday. Students were lined up in the garden that first day at lunch to charge their phones using clean, renewable, and free energy! So cool!
On Wednesday we loaded up our wheelbarrows with mulch and walked them over to Gateway Middle School, to work with their Garden class in their small garden. It was the first time our two groups met, and we hope to work together again soon! See the photo below of that fabulous day.
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We wrapped up a very productive week in the garden as students worked in teams to complete six different projects in the garden: building granite steps, re-painting our solar energy box, painting two chairs, building compost dividers, constructing a retaining wall made from log rounds, and installing some drip irrigation. It was a great week of teamwork, skill development, and lots of fun! Very proud of all the work the students accomplished this week!
This week our gardeners took a break from getting dirty in the garden and began measuring the growth of our new seedlings. After just two weeks most of them have sprouted, with the mighty cucumbers proving to be the strongest growers, some at 2.5 centimeters already! After that, Gateway's own technology guru Hakan came out and gave us a lesson on making organic smoothies. All the kids got a turn to make their own with kale and strawberries from our garden, plus some store-bought produce. Thanks Hakan!
This week our teenage gardeners learned how drip irrigation works. After practicing punching some poly tubing, connecting some emitter line, and mounting both a micro spray and emitter, they were ready to go to the north wing in the garden and replace the perforated emitter line with some micro sprays. We're trying this method because we think the perforated line was not delivering enough water to where it was need most: to the plants. We hope the microsprayers will be a more direct delivery method. The students did a great job with their first irrigation installation, everything works perfectly!
Meanwhile, the seeds we planted two weeks ago are sprouting! Always an exciting time when that happens. We'll be measuring their growth and comparing notes on whose are growing the fastest, and why that is. And in a few weeks we'll transplant them into our garden beds to see how they fare in the "real world!" |
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