Our BBQ

The seedlings have now grown into bigger healthier plants, and are still growing. Cinnamon was sprinkled on top of the soil so no mold would grow around the plant. There was a lot of extra vegetation around the green house so Chris S and I used pliers to clip them away. After that, we cleared the bins outside the green house so the sunflower seeds would have an easy place to grow. I also learned that the three numbers on the back of fertilizer bags showed how much Nitrogen, Phosphorous, and potassium they had. Once the work was all done, we sat down around the picnic bench and had a little BBQ. There were chips, soda, burgers, veggie burgers and hot dogs. We talked for a while about what we’d all be doing that weekend and eventually packed everything up and left. In the future, we’re going to move some of the plants in the green house to the two gardens outside once there is no more danger of frost.

Chris R.

An Update on Our Progress

In Garden Club, we recently thinned the plants left in Cat Hall so not too many roots would absorb the water they get from us and nutrients they get from the soil. Also, by thinning the plants, we allowed more light to reach the remaining leaves. So instead of having 10 or 15 plants in a small pot, we now only have three. After that, we moved all of the lettuce from Cat Hall to the green house and finished watering them there. On Thursday, we’ll move the rest of the plants to the green house because it’ll be warm enough. It’s good to move plants from a different location on a day with good weather because if the environment were too different than the previous one, it could be a shock to the plant and possibly kill it. Sunflowers will also be added in the brown bins outside the green house but we have not planned a precise date when to do that yet.

Chris R.

Is Garden Club "Eco Friendly?"

Many of the things we do here in Garden club are very “eco friendly.” We grow our own plants and turn them into food that we then share with our classmates. This is considered eco friendly because it doesn’t use all the transportation methods used if you ordered what we already make from some other place. Now let’s say someone did that. What process would need to be taken to get that food from there to here? The people supplying the order would most likely need a truck to deliver it, which burns fuel and pollutes the air. Even before the truck delivers it, the store in which it was being held in uses up electricity. Also the packaging for the order is made in factories that use fuel, and that packaging ends up in landfills as waste. The garden club totally avoids all of those things. We plant all of our stuff in the green house and carry it down to the kitchen when it’s ready using no trucks, no electricity, while creating no waste.

Chris R.

Garden Club 2011

In Garden Club, we started off the year with planting herbs and lettuce. The herbs we planted were lemon thyme, oregano, sage and basil. Mr. Clarke and I planted the seeds early this year and while we waited for them to grow, more gardeners joined us. After the plants had finished growing in the fall, the gardeners harvested all of them and brought them inside. We used the lemon thyme to make tea, and soled the rest of the herbs at an herb sale, which was held at our school. During lunch, the students would take their time to stop by and see what herbs we had, and if they saw something that appealed to them, they’d buy it. We used the left over basil to make pesto sauce to mix with pasta. All the gardeners helped make it in the kitchen and when we were finished, we decided to give it to the students during lunch.

Believe it or not, we did a lot of strenuous work during Garden Club. However, nothing could have been more strenuous than planting the blueberry bushes. First we had to get the shrubs on the barrow 1 at a time. Since the barrow was about 3 times smaller than the shrub it took a while to bring it down to the garden. After bringing that down we went and got the other one. We dug holes in the ground and stuck the shrubs in. After that, we filled the holes with dirt and water and circled the bushes with rocks. Finally, we were finished. All together it took about 45 minutes.

In the fall, we spent time fixing up the green house. It was like any other green house except that it hadn’t been used in a while, the door was broken and it was filled with dirty pots and soil. So, during focus Mr. Clarke and I would spend some time on the door. It took a while to finally fix the door so it closed correctly without letting in any cold air. Then we got some more gardeners to help us clean out the green house. Eventually everything was cleaned and the green house looked brand new.

In the winter, we had a poinsettia sale for the holidays. They were donated to us from Dominic’s mother, one of the gardeners. Many people bought our flowers and greatly appreciated our holiday spirit. For Valentines Day, we sold carnations (which were also donated from Dominic’s mother). We rose about the same amount of money as we did when selling the poinsettias.

At the end of winter, Mr. Clarke bought some seeds with the money we had raised and let the other gardeners and I plant them. The seeds he bought were peas, lemons, beats, lettuce, tomatoes, brussel sprouts and basil. Elliot’s mother also donated some pansy seeds to us. So in order to plant them we had to clean out all the flowerpots and bins and fill them with soil. We left the seeds in water over night before planting them the next day. After we planted the seeds, we organised them by labelling each bin. Then we took each box and bin and put them on a window sill so they could get sun. Unfortunately, we found out later on that the lemon seeds and peas couldn’t tolerate our expert plant growing abilities and died.

In the future we plan to add a little more variation to our garden. We might add some pumpkin, sunflower and cucumber seeds. We’re also going to cover up the blue berry bushes with netting so the birds don’t get a free snack. The seedlings will also be moved to bigger pots and then be moved to the green house. Hopefully, we will also recruit some more gardeners.

Chris R