Tilling Tigers

      Tilling Tigers have been luckier than most…we managed several ribbon cutting ceremonies!

The KidsConnect Club at Coppell Community Gardens basked in the glory and satisfaction of helping to harvest, to date, over 7,000 lbs. of food for Metrocrest Social Services.  (How exciting we have been a part of helping to grow and bring nutritious, fresh food locally to our neighbors.)

We’ve shared tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, Swiss chard, beans, okra, squash, pumpkins and herbs with Metrocrest clients (See Byron presenting those lovely veggies!)  You’ll see teacher Sandra Morgan with the Coppell Kids at their ribbon-cutting in the first group picture.  At Carver Elementary School in Greenville, Texas, things are just getting started with plans for the Outdoor Science Lab’s gardens, pond, weather station, rainwater collection system, and bird and butterfly sanctuaries.  Science teacher Jan Teeters is shown with the children breaking ground and celebrating with their ribbon-cutting.  Here in north Texas we’re so lucky to be able to garden pretty much throughout the year with our temperatures, and so we’ll continue with vegetable, herb and flower lovelies throughout the fall and winter, even.  We’re a little sad that we’re “wrapping up” our Orange Thumb project (see the happy faces with our lovely Fiskars tools in the next picture!) but obviously, the spirit of Orange Thumb will live on, through our continued gardening at all three locations that have been a part of our Tilling Tigers project.

   

  In fact, Tilling Tigers has come full circle because the after-school 5^th grade Junior Master Gardener program will start back up on September 11.   Master Gardener and teacher Sondra Feduccia (next picture) will resume with a new group of students who will earn their JMG pins during the school year, as they learn about the wonders of growing neat stuff and caring for tender seedlings.  To start the new Tilling Tigers school year off, we’ll be making ‘Plant People’ (described earlier).   (Who can resist those cute faces which will soon sprout ryegrass hair???)   We’ll also be making garden cards (like the ones in Spanish being held up by seniors and youth at a social services center in Nicaragua).  This time, we’ll be making these picture garden cards for orphans and homeless children for a teacher’s next mission trip to Brazil.  “Como vai voce?  Meu nome e…………  Eu tenho…..anos.  Prazer em corresponder com voce!  Tchau!”  (Among other things, and – as we would say to you -- “It’s been a real pleasure ‘corresponding’ with you.  Ciao!”)

 

 

      

 

The Tilling Tigers had such a good time “passing their Fiskars Orange Thumb baton” to the Junior Master Gardener groups in Coppell, Texas, that the Tigers decided to invite another school group to participate in Orange Thumb.

 

 

 

Carver Elementary School in Greenville, Texas, put the word out last year that they intend to develop an outdoor Science Lab behind the school.  Hopefully, it will involve some square foot garden plots, a pond, a weather station, and a butterfly garden.  The bad news is there is no money for science for the schools!  Carver must beg for every dollar for every item they will need from the community.  So far, $1,500 has been raised to erect a fence (the first step).   Next year, we’d like to help them apply for their own Orange Thumb grant from Fiskars!

 

We decided to partner with Carver and help with the plans for their garden.  One of the fundraising ideas we came up with is to collect bureau drawers from dumpsters and garage sales.  We’ll drill holes in the bottom of each drawer for drainage, fill the drawer with potting soil, and divide the drawer into 2 or 3 sections with string.  We’ll sell the completed “individual square foot garden kit” with some packets of easy-to-grow seeds.  (You can see a picture of the square foot drawers in Picture #9296.)   We’re thinking moms and grandmas will love to buy these and get their kids and grandkids started with their very own, portable gardens!

 

Another idea is to make “garden fairy chairs” to sell or auction off.  (You’ll see a “before” picture in #9296 and #9307)    We’ll look for old chairs at garage sales or thrift shops, punch the seats out of them, paint them, add decals, and sink a peat moss “hanging basket”-type plant where the seat would be.   These really turn out beautiful and are so pretty and unusual in a garden!  (In the picture, we just stuck a basket with 3 plants in it to give the Carver kids an idea of what we plan on doing.)

 

Since we got a compliment on the Fiskars blog about the pretty stepping stones we featured in one of our earlier blogs, we thought you might also enjoy seeing a smaller stone the children had fun with last week at the Coppell Community Garden JMG class.  (In picture #9262 you can see the cute stone on the right, a couple of (real!) butternut squashes we harvested for the Food Bank on the left, and a variation of a “Plant Person” in the middle.  (We make “plant people” who grow real hair this way:  put a couple of spoonfuls of ryegrass seed into the tip of a knee-high pantyhose.  Fill with a couple of cups of potting mix.  Tie tightly, decorate to make a face, and put the “wick” (bottom part) of the hose in a glass half full of water, after you soak the whole head well.  The wick will draw water up into the plant person’s head and grow the greatest head of green hair you’ve ever seen!  You can braid it, make ponytails, cut it, etc.  In the picture here, someone made a caterpillar but we’ll have to figure out how to position it to take up its ongoing water supply.  Cute, no?)

 

From another suggestion we got from the Fiskars’ blog, we’ve begun talking about introducing some of the fresh vegetables we grow and harvest to the rest of the kids in our school in the fall.  Since the Tilling Tigers’ garden isn’t as big as the Coppell kids’ gardens, we’ll have to do it slowly:  maybe one class at a time.  We think we could help other children learn about better nutrition if we can “spread the good word” to the kids not lucky enough to participate in the JMG program.

 

In Picture #9297, the Carver kids have just received their Orange Thumb T-shirts.  Carver is an inner-city Title I school.  Almost all of the children at Carver are on the free lunch program.  The children were very happy to receive the T-shirts.  (The teacher confided to us that the Orange Thumb shirt will probably be a regular part of the boy’s after-school wardrobe, as he doesn’t seem to have more than his school clothes to wear.)

 

In the same picture, you’ll also see that the children have received personal letters with their new shirts, with a picture of a Tilling Tiger kid.  The letter says how excited we are to be “rooting” for Carver and Carver’s garden plans.  We enclosed a packet of wildflower seeds they took home with them, and each child got a 4” pot with soil and began growing radishes the same day.  (Some of us adults who work with kids who garden have the children make a garden-theme notecards with a greeting in Spanish for needy children in Spanish-speaking countries that we adults distribute when we’re on humanitarian mission trips to South and Central America.  Sometimes it’s the first time the children there have received a photo of anyone.  The idea has been so successful that we now try to do it on all the projects we do when our kids are involved with kids from other schools or groups.)  In Picture #9311, you’ll see a sample of a picture each Carver child will glue onto a letter for each of the newest fifth grade Tilling Tigers who will be starting their 2008/2009 JMG program in September.

 

In Picture #9307, despite the heat, the Carver kids love working with the nifty Fiskars tools as they “break ground” for their future garden.

 

The Carver kids show off their new duds in front of the school playground in

#9323.  Thanks, Fiskars, for helping to make gardening and Science so much fun!

 

P.S., we’d love to hear others share their ideas for community fundraising!

 

        The “Tilling Tigers” have passed the baton to the next group of Junior Master Gardeners who will be participating in our Orange Thumb project.  (Altogether, 4 groups of children will be running with the Orange Thumb banner, and all will qualify for their Junior Master Gardener pin at the end of the project.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We got up early to prepare for the arrival of the 9 – 11 year olds who would work in the gardens this week.  In #9203 you can see that the Fiskars tools are all ready for the newest swarm of young gardeners!

 

In #9210, the children receive their T-shirts, along with a packet of wildflower seeds and a note and picture from each of the first group of Tilling Tigers.  (They wished them well and told them how much fun they’re going to have.)

 

This phase of our project takes place in one of the two community gardens in Coppell, Texas, where vegetables are harvested every weekend for the local Food Bank.  In Picture #9207, you’ll see what the children will realize when they arrive at the gardens…they will be participating in “planting a row for the hungry.”

 

Hey, what do you think of our fancy new orange duds?  We’re learning tool safety and garden basics (#9212) as we’re finally let out in the soil to “do our stuff!” 

 

Oh, wow!  What a new experience to dig in the beds with all our new tools and pull up cuties like these little carrots!  (Picture #9220)

 

We can’t wait to see what next week brings!

 

 

 

How satisfied we were to end the school year with a garden party that featured all of our very own vegetables, herbs, fruit, and flowers that we grew ourselves (in the first picture you see some of what we’ve been growing!)  A few of our parents warned our teacher, Mrs. Feduccia, that we would never eat things like lettuce, radishes and cauliflower.  Well, it made a difference when we grew it ourselves – from babies.  By the end of the season, we were fighting over who got to take what home!

We’ve used a lot of our school subjects by learning about gardening.  In Picture 8952, some of us “Tilling Tigers” are entering in our Junior Master Gardener journals how many inches of rain got measured in our rain gauge, what the soil temperature was on that day, and how many inches of mulch we still have in the raised beds.

We then harvested some of the beautiful irises we grew in that bed for pretty bouquets for our end-of-school-year garden party (see proud Mrs. Feduccia in #8917.  She and her husband are iris & daylily award winners:  wow!)   As we pull up things like lettuce and spinach and other things for our salads and dips, we’re making room for other plants and vegetables to grow in the same garden beds (#8954); in this picture you’ll also see the stepping stones each group of Jr. Master Gardeners decorate and add to our school garden each year.   Not only did we prepare some great vegetable and fruit platters to enjoy, we experimented with some of the herbs we love to grow (#8928).  

 

 

(Now we get to taste on a salad the neat things we’ve been chomping on during the school year!

It was really awesome to see how huge so many plants got after our tender loving care (#8959)!

 

Over the next couple of weeks we’ll be starting some new projects, and we can’t wait!  Stay tuned!

 “Christmas in April !”  That’s what the “Tilling Tigers” said when they saw the beautiful goodies that Fiskars sent so we could really look sharp in our gardens (Picture 8904).  Wow!  We decorated our Orange Thumb sign with some foliage, a matching orange ribbon, and…of course…the flag of Texas!   (Picture 8911 shows Brandon in front of our indoor GrowLab, where we started a lot of our earlier plants that are now ready to be put in our garden beds.  You’ll see some of us (Picture 8932) working in the dirt, fighting over our gorgeous new garden tools!  Jennifer got to try out the neat Fiskars knee pads first; here you see her in Picture 8943 wondering if she’s now eligible to join a hockey team, too!  And, boy, do we love those collapsible butterfly bins!  We were so happy to finally put out our little tomato plants we raised from babies.  In Picture 8948, you see us planting some of these cuties and adding trellises as we work in the beds.  Farmerella signing off, with wishes for happy planting, fellow Orange Thumbers !  

 

 

Hi, my blog name is Farmerella, because I live on a farm.  I’m gonna bloviate (blogviate?  bloggiberish?  blog-a-yada-yada-yada?) because everyone else in our “Tilling Tigers” Junior Master Gardener group wanted to be out gardening, instead of sitting blogging on a computer!

We’re gonna be doing some awesome things in our gardens over the next few months.  The best way I can describe it is to show y’all some pictures.  (This is how we talk in Texas; hey, maybe the Houston bloggers will add some more Texas twang words in their blog!  And…as we read the rest of you BlogOthumbs, we hope you’ll include some typical blog-a-lects from your part of the country…)

In our group picture, we’re playing “Who hid the parsley, sage, and thyme in our giganto rosemary plant.”  We’re pretty excited about some of the things we’re growing, even though some of us never heard of some of these words!  I admit we’ve started getting interested in what it all might taste like.  (We’ve even started taking home weird and wonderful stuff like cabbage and “Sondra’s mother-in-law’s Russian cabbage roll-ups” recipes, too!)

With Fiskars help, our “Tilling Tigers” community service project involves teaming up with a “sister” JMG group at a community garden in nearby Coppell, Texas.  The “Helping Hands Garden” does really neat things like raise food for the needy.  We’ll all be working on that as our group project.

Check out the picture with the buildings:  hey, will we all fit as we sit around that one little picnic table next to the tool shed?  (Don’t worry; there’s plenty of space for all of us to work in the raised beds!)

Can you picture us harvesting some of the lovelies you see in the other picture, where that cabbage recipe will come in handy?  The “Bright Lights” Swiss chard is really gonna be pretty when it’s ready.  We’ll learn how to grow our own plants, what they need, how they grow, and about other interesting stuff.

In the next picture, we’ll get our hands dirty and try out this “shepherd’s bin” compost thingy.  (It has no bottom; you just pick it up, put it on a different spot, then pitch everything back into the new spot.  The bottom stuff ends up on top.  Cool!)  We’ll learn about soil and water and we’ll build our own worm bin.  We’ll make “transpiration traps” (hey, in Texas we probably say that differently from how it looks); maybe some of us will wear little explorer hats!

You probably can’t see from the pictures all the birds, butterflies, lizards and bugs that we’ll find and learn about.  We’ll maybe wear some detective hats for when we learn what gardens and even backyards need to help wildlife survive with water, shelter, and food.

You’ll be seeing some new faces as we do this in stages; there’ll be new kids joining us to be part of our gardening project.  We can’t wait to read your blogs and compare fun stuff!