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.

Growing...

Calendula Mix (yellow & orange double)

Bachelor Button Mix

Sweet Banana Peppers

Black Beauty Zucchini

Calypso Cucumber

Candytuft

Crackerjack Marigolds

Shasta Daisies

Perennial Lupines

NuMex Twilight Peppers (hot)

Purple Coneflower

Red Burgundy Okra

Information about the tomatoes we started is forthcoming...

International Earth Day 2012

Today our students designed posters for International Earth Day.  They were all submitted and one of them just may end up being turned into a banner that may become a permanent part of the Garden of Hope.  I saw some very cute posters and I look forward to sitting down and going through all of them.  

Meanwhile, we continued with starting seeds indoors.  Instead of limiting this to all students in fourth grade and under, as originally planned, I opened it up to the whole school, teachers and parents included.  So, today, after photographing each child planting each seed, I headed outdoors to meet the parents in the line that forms at pickup time.  I was able to get each family who was there to pick up their child to plant at least one seed.  Community, indeed! :)  

The parents seemed thrilled and their kids loved the idea!  It was, all in all, a wonderful way to spend International Earth Day.  If the weather holds, it just may happen that the day all of our seedlings make it outside is National Earth Day (4/22/2012).  Here's to hoping! 

Meanwhile, here are some photographs.  There were hundreds of photos to choose from, so there is only a sampling here.  I will likely open up some sort of photo album account somewhere for all parents to view their children's photographs.  And, tomorrow I will post more about what got planted today. 

Sow what'd you do today?

The planting has begun!!!

Our preschool, kindergarten and first grade kicked off our planting today by sowing Japanese Mustard Green and Cimmaron Lettuce seeds into little Jiffy pots.

The students were very excited and could hardly wait until they got their turn to plant their seeds.  I have many pictures to share later, but until then, I'll leave you with these:

Cimmaron Lettuce

Japanese Mustard Greens

*Thank you to GrowNWI for donating the seeds for today's planting! :)

Lessons

Within a matter of weeks, the garden will be bustling with students planting, laying down mulch trails and building and painting signs and benches.  I'm sure they'll have plenty to reflect upon once they start doing the work they've been planning all year. 

Meanwhile, as the garden coordinator, I've already learned quite a few lessons that I've been sharing with the students:

1) If you ask for help, you just may get it!
Explanation: This project started out as a very small idea and it's grown into something much larger that involves more people than I could have imagined.  I no longer feel overwhelmed or in the dark.  Not only have the kids learned a lot, but I have, thanks to everyone who has contributed to this effort.


2) Almost anything can be recycled or reused 
Explanation: We are using an old discarded turtle-shaped sandbox to grow mint, as I've been told mint grows like a weed.  Also, we're reusing coffee cans, discarded cookie tins and other receptacles as planters.  We've also come up with a creative use for tires (see below).


3) While there are always new "problems" popping up, there's almost always a very simple (yet creative) solution!
Explanation: While looking at the plot of land that the garden sits on, we discovered there were quite a few discarded tires.  Tires, of course, cannot be tossed with regular garbage and we didn't want trash laying around and cluttering up the property.  As it turns out, what initially seemed to be a problem was turned into a solution for another issue: sweet potatoes don't grow well in clay, which is what we have going on beneath the top 6" of topsoil.  However, if you plant sweet potatoes and then place a tire above them and add more soil, the potatoes will grow into the soil in the tire.  Periodically you can add more tires and soil until eventually you end up with sweet potato towers! 

I look forward to this coming week.  I'll be posting pictures of progress in the classrooms as our students start the seeds indoors.  Hopefully we'll get the first tilling done this week so that we can call the town of Merrillville and request our delivery of compost so that we may till a second time.

I'll update soon!

Math & Beautiful Weekends

This past week was school spirit week at Avicenna Academy.  It was perfect timing as it was also the most beautiful week of the year thus far!  Some of our junior high students made their way out to the garden site to take some measurements for some work they'll be doing as part of their math class.  

                                                       

And, some students have taken advantage of the beautiful weather and begun painting our tires (for use in our sweet potato towers) and restoring an old tool shed on the property.  

Students in fourth grade and below will begin growing seeds in their classes so that we may transfer the plants to our garden once the time is right.  Meanwhile, I met with master gardener, Monica, from GrowNWI who let me know that once we ask the town of Merrillville to come and dump compost, they can till it in for us.  We also had a nice, long conversation about composting.

There's a lot of work to be done, but I'm so happy at the way things are falling into place!

And, just this morning I received an email with this link in it:  Garden of Hope

Beautiful Day

This morning's weather was beautiful and held up nicely for our groundbreaking ceremony.  We had many people show up: Bud Crist (President of Merrillville's Stormwater Utility), Derek Frazier (Food Procurement Manager with the Food Bank of NWI), Chuck Gleason (Project Manager with GrowNWI), Jon Hendricks (Photographer with NWI Times) and members of Avicenna Academy's board of directors.

Here are some pictures from today...

Part of the "community" in our garden...

 

One of our students collecting a sample from the core sampler.

Doug Molchan sharing the garden plan.

Students enjoying some refreshments after the groundbreaking ceremony.

A picture of the soil in the core sampler.  

We have a rich top layer (approximately 6") followed by a layer mixed with clay.