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
