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!
I love your paver stones that you layed out in the photos as your walkway, did you make them yourself? Your class really looks like they are having fun. Its good to know you are directly benefiting from the veggies and herbs you are growing in your garden, so do you incorporate them into the lunches served at school?
Hi, Other Thumber! Wish we had had the time to make the stones ourselves but, no, we just decorated them. So far, with the produce we share with the local Food Banks, we're not growing enough to also supply the school, but it's a great idea and we'll take your suggestion & propose it in the Fall; maybe a different class each month can taste from the bounty. Let us hear from you if you're doing cool things with stones! Happy planting & harvesting!