Our First Outside Planting Day!

I want to start of by saying that I love my kids! They are the best.  They all worked really hard and we accomplished all our planned tasks.  I worked up the nerve to include a video, so be nice.  I made a point to not say "y'all!"

We planted our squash, beans and onions outside and started on one potato tower.  The day after this video, we made a second potato tower, we are trying two different methods to see which one works best. We also had a new addition to our group.  Mr. Sloan will be working with us for the rest of the year and taking over the project when I leave at the end of the year.  He has tons of garden knowledge and he is not at all above getting his hands dirty.  

We have lots of other exciting things happening so I'll keep you posted!

On a sad note, we had a slight setback.  When I checked the greenhouse this morning, all of our new baby plants had burned up.  We had had a beautiful weekend but the warmer temperatures destroyed our plants.  Lesson learned, we are replanting and we are going to make sure that the ventilation system is turned on in the future.

SPRING BREAK......is over

Last week was Spring Break and I have been determined from the very beginning of this project to get plants into the ground after Spring Break.  We have worked hard and despite some setbacks due to testing and weather, I am certain that we will move our squash outside by Thursday.

While the kids were away, I took the opportunity to finish the ground prep for our garden.  First, I mixed in the top soil, then I made 8 rows.  After that I mixed up blood meal and 13-13-13 fertilizer and spread it on the rows.  I didn't bother to water in the fertilizer because there was rain in the forecast.  And rain it did!

Hope it dries out quick!

Our plants are doing great.  We moved all our seed trays to the greenhouse and they have been popping up like crazy.  Our squash is so big and we transplanted the zucchini out of the seed tray today.

Squash (1 month)

Zucchini (2 weeks)

Some of the other plants that have germinated are tomatoes, jalapenos and bell peppers.

Baby tomato plants (so cute!)

One last little but of info: we planted mustard greens and cilantro today so if everything works out, we'll  be able to make salsa!

Aloe Vera and The Vegetable Graveyard

Today was an interesting day for us.  We had the opportunity to transplant some aloe vera plants for another teacher.  We filmed the whole event, but I'll spare you the pain of listening to my West Texas accent and all of my "y'all's" and "ok's."  I took some snapshots from the video instead.  Almost all the kids had heard of Aloe Vera and associated it with sunburn, but I think it was neat for them to see the gel inside the plant and find out where it actually comes from.  

 Our potting mix is about half sand and half garden soil with some gravel mixed in.

 This is our "mama" plant and all of the "babies," there are way to many plants in this pot.

One of the "baby" plants ready for it's own pot.

 We accidentally broke off one of the leaves so I took the opportunity to show the kids the gel inside.  I cut off the skin so they could really see the gel.

We ended up with about 14 new plants, Mrs. Thorn took her "mama" and 5 new plants and let us keep the rest.  A lot of the kids wanted to take one home right away, but I'm going the make them wait a little while.  They need to learn how to take care of these little darlins.

This is our "Vegetable Graveyard"

Monday I brought some of the remnants from our morning juice.  I planted 3 radish tops, 7 carrot tops, 1 celery base and 1purple onion root.  After one day the radish were already growing new leaves and after two days, a few carrots are gaining some new growth.  Today, the celery made it's appearance.  This is one that all the kids are really curious about, I'm not really sure what to expect, so I keep telling them that we just have to wait and see what happens.

Next week we have Spring Break, I hope that all of our seed will germinate over the next week and we come back to lots of little plants to transplant!

Week 2




This week our major focus is to finish clearing out our spot and plant all of our "crops" in egg cartons in the classroom.  We have made some major progress thanks to Ms Blume, the very appropriately named horticulture teacher at our school.  Her class delivered many much needed garden tools in the form of shovels, rakes and hoes.  So now, everybody can work and we don't have to take turns using the tools we had.

My classroom is starting to look like the garden department at Lowe's.  There are containers everywhere.  Unfortunately, I don't have a updated picture, these are from last week and our stash has nearly double since then. Everyday we are planting or transplanting to make room.  I hope that we will have tons of plants to move outside after spring break!

We have been so busy working that we haven't stopped to talk about goals.  My goals for this project are simple: 1. Grow all our plants from seeds, 2. Be able to harvest something that the kids can eat, 3. Finish this project out through the end of the year, 4. Become the fascilater of this project, in other words the kids are blogging, taking pictures/video and making every decision based on what they have learned.

So far we have thriving squash and baby bean growing.  We have planted red bell peppers, jalapenos, grape tomatoes and zucchini in the classroom and should germinate next week sometime.  We have also started a "Vegetable Graveyard" but more on that later.