Back To School in the Garden

 BACK TO SCHOOL!

Existing raised beds 

September is back to school time for many of us.  At the preschool, September is when the new sessions of the LA Up begin, so with this group of kids, we are starting from scratch!  Ms. Jeana Courson, the Academy Director at La Petite, ordered a new raised bed kit just for these students.

The kit was easy enough for our four year olds to put together with minimum help from the adults in the class.  The children  put the boards into a square and added the corner supports.

Then stakes were added to the corners to secure the box to the ground and hammered into the ground for added support.

Decorative caps were attached and hammered down for good measure.  Each kid got to "tap-tap-tap" three times with the hammer!

The box was then filled up with soil by the students.  The pink shovel proved to be very popular with our girls.  Luckily we have several.

The teachers determined that the class would like to grow a salad garden, which is perfect for a Fall growing season.  The kids planted spinach, baby lettuce, heart lettuce, rainbow lettuce and bambino carrots.

We added marigold plants as a beneficial element.  Most pests do not like marigolds and it really helps to have something established in the box to encourage the kids to water.  Most preschool aged kids do not understand watering dirt, but can get their head around watering the plants.

So they did.  The teachers are really good about making the watering cans available for the students to water, and they LOVE to water.  It's a good thing, because out here in the high desert, plants need a lot of water to thrive.

Since I have been working with the younger group of kids since May, we did a different project for these classes....planting flowers!

The kids put the soil into the pots.  This is always a favorite activity.  Many worms were spotted, sparking a great deal of excitement!

Finally, the impatients were transplanted into the pots.  We talked about how some plants like sun and some like shade.

All in all, a great day at school!

Cheers~
Marti Lindsey~The Garden Lady

Potato Harvest at the Preschool!

From the Marti Lindsey--Garden Lady

Back in June, we planted potatoes in some regular 2 gallon pots at the preschool.  These weren't seed potatoes, just potatoes from my pantry that had started to grow eyes.  Although it is not recommended to use regular potatoes from the grocery store, my philosophy has always been that if they were growing in my pantry, that they would certainly grow in the garden!

 

Washing the potatoes

First we placed the pots on a small table so my tiny friends could see what they were doing.  We then dug until we found potatoes.  Because they were grown in fairly small pots, most of the potatoes were fairly small.  After the potatoes were dug out of the pots, they went to the orange washing station to be cleaned.

Tuesday's Harvest!

Out of 4 pots, we harvested 28 potatoes!!  The students had planted other vegetables throughout the summer and there were also several tomatoes and beans ready to pick.

YUMMY!

We got the potatoes inside and gave them an additional wash.  The larger ones were cut into bit sized pieces and the smaller ones were left whole.  We steamed them with some season salt and pepper and served them with lunch.  The kids loved them!!  We will most definitely be growing potatoes again.

Cheers~
Marti--The Garden Lady

Old Friends and New

 
Today I started a new adventure as a Garden Coach at a local preschool.  I made lots of tiny friends today, thanks to an old friend, Jeana.  Jeana used to work with me many, many moons ago when I was a District Manager at Kindercare.  Jeana's new school has a preschool program along with an LA Up Program, both with amazing, dedicated teachers, but not much time for gardening.  Enter Marti Lindsey--The Garden Lady.

All of the kids were excited and eager to help!  What kid doesn't love to play in the dirt, right?  

We started off by removing some of the compacted soil in the existing garden boxes.  The kids filled a 20 gallon tub, one shovel full at a time!

We added Kellogg's Organic Soil to amend the old soil in the beds.  Then the kids started planting!  Today we started an elevated raised bed with herbs and three regular raised beds.  One bed is all strawberries, which was very exciting for the kids.  The other beds will house a variety of vegetables including beans, tomatoes, peppers and eggplant.

I am excited to make new friends and share my love of growing with the kids!  Here's what's growing at our place right now:

Radishes, Carrots, Turnips & Golden Beets

Lettuce

Spinach

Peas & Purple Cauliflower

I'm so excited to go back next week and do more work with the kids!  Until then, keep on growing!

Cheers~
Marti Lindsey--The Garden Lady