No danger of frost!

First of all, good news on the funding front!  I'll be posting more about that soon...

Secondly, the planting has begun.  We put some flowers around the perimeter of the corner of our garden in... and soon the vegetables will be in!  We are currently building strawberry towers, setting up watering and laying down newspaper and mulch to prevent weed growth.  Here are some pictures from late last week:

On Monday, every single student at Avicenna Academy donned "work clothes" instead of our uniform as we headed out to the garden to continue working.  Each grade level had a very specific mission:

Our preschool through first grade was tasked with pulling roots and picking up debris from our garden site.  The third and fourth graders assisted them!

Our older boys, with the assistance of some of our teachers, built a wheelbarrow and a garden arch...

While our older boys were building, our older girls were altering plastics so that we could reuse them as planters.  

                                

They also helped with providing the second coat of paint on our garden shed!

Students in fifth grade and up assisted the teachers with cleaning and organizing the perimeter of the site...

Our second grade students spray painted tires for use in our tuber towers!

And, some of the students found some friendly garden critters!  Here, one of our second graders showed me a small worm.  She found relocated him to our compost pile after this picture was taken!

The third through seventh graders helped to spread a fresh layer of compost over our garden.  And, soon, we'll have the compost tilled in to the existing soil!  Soon, oh so soon, we shall be planting our sprouts!!!

It was a beautiful day and the students not only worked hard but they had a blast while doing it!  The time went by quickly and some of our older students returned the next afternoon to do more work! 

Our Earth Day Work Day was a success! :)

Our Earth Day Celebration

On Monday, in honor of Earth Day, all of Avicenna's students will be out working in the garden.  Several things will be going on:  firstly, we will finish removing any tree roots that may still be out there.  Secondly, we will be spreading the compost so that it can be tilled into the existing soil.  The little kids will be painting tires and canisters that we'll use for planters and we'll do final measurements so that we can purchase other items we need to move forward with our garden plan.

And, look what a difference a month has made!!!  We planted the seeds for these babies one month ago and we've already got beautiful plants!  The students are so excited to transplant them!

Milkweed Seeds

I received a package with a return address "A Field in Vermont" yesterday.  When I opened the package, there was an envelope with seeds inside...

milkweed seeds!!!!!

We're finding help both near and far for our garden efforts!  What a wonderful thing. :)

Mount Compost & Sprouting

This morning, the town of Merrillville delivered two truckloads of beautiful, nutrient-rich compost to the site of our Garden of Hope.  It was a gorgeous, crisp morning so many of our students gathered around what I'm now calling Mount Compost to talk about what compost is and how compost happens.  They were able to see the final product of composting while also catching a glimpse (and whiff) of the recently started compost bin we have near our colorful tool shed.

And, most of the seeds we planted last week have already begun sprouting!  The students were very happy to see this.

 close up of the fifth graders' sprouts

the compost was just delivered

 some students looking at what a recently started compost heap looks like

some of Avicenna Academy's students and teachers

the teachers' and parents' sprouts

Cleaning Up

On Thursday of this past week, our students in fifth through seventh grade went to the garden site to pick up trash that had blown in and pull up some tree roots that were chopped up by the tilling.  The site is starting to look great and I can't wait until the calendar agrees that it's time for us to start planting outdoors!

Request: Milkweed!!!

If there are any blog readers that have some milkweed plants that they'd like to donate, please let me know!  We're planting many other butterfly-friendly plants as we'd like to encourage the insects to make home near/in our garden.