Winter in the Garden--LA Up at La Petite

 

Welcome 2015

 Winter in the garden may not be as exciting as Spring and Summer gardening, there is still a lot going on in our preschool garden at LA Up.  In February we had brussel sprouts, broccoli, carrots and garlic growing in the recycled shelf in the preschool area.

Also in the preschool area, the elevated raised bed has lettuce, herbs and sugar snap peas going strong.  The kids love to eat the snap peas right off the plant.  You can see from the picture that we have nothing growing in the center of the box.  That is mainly due to the shorter arm span of three and four year olds.  They cannot reach to water, thus the bare spot!

In the LA Up yard, we have a bed of garlic.  There are a few carrots in the foreground.  The other boxes in this yard are growing lettuces, snap peas and the strawberry bed has over wintered well and might start producing again soon!

We harvested some broccoli.  The kids were actually fighting over who got to eat the broccoli!!

They did their best to divide it up fairly.  I prefer to let them work these things out amongst themselves!

In any garden, watering is key.  I found that the best way to ensure adequate watering is to provide watering cans for the kids to use to water.  They really do seem to enjoy the upkeep of their garden beds, even in the winter when the least glamourous things are growing!

Cheers~
Marti

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

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