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! :)