Marti Lindsey--The Garden Lady: Officially Spring--March in the LA Up Garden

Marti Lindsey--The Garden Lady

Hello and welcome to Marti Lindsey--The Garden Lady!

I live on a small ranch in unincorporated Los Angeles County with my husband Larry, son Max, puppies Rudy & Valentino and kitties Dixie & Trixie. We have amazing views as far as the eye can see and plenty of room to roam and operate our tractor! I am a certified Master Gardener through University of California Cooperative Extension, Los Angeles County. In the Spring I work at the California State Poppy Reserve where I share my love of nature with visitors from around the world. I also have a passion for living a green lifestyle through RRR-G: reduce-reuse-recycle & growing our own food! I love to share this with kids through my business: Marti Lindsey--The Garden Lady!

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Sunday, April 5, 2015

Officially Spring--March in the LA Up Garden

Spring 2015

March 2015 in the gardens at La Petite Academy and LA Up are off with a bang! One of the best ways to ensure that kids are engaged is to have tools and supplies that are exciting to them. The colored shovels are just the ticket! The pink shovels prove to be the most popular with both the girls and the boys!

The LA Up program added a new garden bed where a sandbox formerly stood. We used 6 bags of top soil to amend the already prepared bed. Since there is not irrigation (or an easy way to add it) near these beds, we used a technique of burying recycled plastic bottles to water at the root level.

The morning session planted banana peppers, spaghetti squash, patty pan squash, yellow cherry tomatoes, sugar snap peas (a favorite), strawberry popcorn and morning glories to climb the fence.

The afternoon class planted on the other half of the bed. They also planted strawberry popcorn! They planted peppers, cherry tomatoes, lemon cucumbers, purple beans and morning glories to climb the fence and watered it all in!

The kids really do enjoy the upkeep of the garden! When do you see a group of three and four year olds standing patiently in line!

The younger group focused on their pots today. We transplanted some pansies as well as planting some nastursium seeds.

The kids really enjoy the process of moving the dirt from the large brightly colored tubs into the pots with our colored shovels!

Miss Annie is helping her class take soil directly from the bags and put into the pots as neatly as possible!

We found a potato! We grow a lot of potatoes and somehow this one was missed when we harvested them in the Fall!

We also use the cinder blocks to grow at the preschool. This can only be done successfully in the winter and early spring due to the extreme temperatures here. The kids are growing lettuces and beans in them. We were slowed down by several worm sightings, which brings all work to an immediate halt to observe these beneficial creatures in our gardens!