It has been rainy. I am glad for the rain for our rivers and the fish in them, for our forests and the mushrooms in them, and our summer and the lack of rain in those days. Tomorrow will determine if this June is THE WETTEST IN OREGON HISTORY. We had 27 days of rain in April. The past 24 days have been wet as well which left us with 10 days of mixed sun/clouds in the past 2 months. So, how is everyone doing? Most people are bumming. Most of us have had just about enough. At least those cool crops are doing well.
The gardens are getting a beating but they are draining very well. We have had low temps and low light levels so most of the plants in our gardens seem dormant. We are fully planted for the summer season but we have not yet planted our squashes or pole beans. The slugs have been unrelenting. Our spring crops have been doing well. The radishes swelled and burst over the past month. They have been a delicious and exciting plant to harvest with the kids. We are always so surprised to see the bright red and white globes come out of the soil. They taste great and are even spicy. The beets, arugula, salads, and peas are doing wonderfully. I already have pods growing. The temps made our arugula GIANT size. I recently harvested almost 10 lbs of arugula and greens to make room for warmer season crops. I munched without using my hands while they were in the ground to make the kids laugh. They of course loved it and repeated it. It has been a trip watching the kids interact with the gardens. I don't mind that they grab, pull, munch, and bust up the garden. When I am there these are learning moments and I encourage the children to discover with their senses (to the shocked faces of my teachers). Exploring the boundaries of the garden is how the children START to interact with the space but they EVOLVE their actions with the garden to meet their own needs for discovery, play, and munch time. I don't like to say "Don't" at any time in the garden. I set up some ground rules (pun intended) that the kids follow. Be safe, Be respectful, Be responsible. Some side rules include Look, Listen, and Be Gentle. When I notice the kids tearing leaves we talk about leaves and how plants grow. How fast can you grow without your feet I ask them? How fast can you grow without food? I try and relate these happenings as they occur directly to our learning outcomes.
Look, I don't want a beautiful garden, I want a used garden. Once children begin to understand how the garden works and why it should be treated a certain way, they become my ambassadors. They begin to tell other kids how to behave and interact with the garden. I watched a kid last week pick and eat an entire bean sprout. Honestly, it looked pretty delicious (but I knew better). He thought he could eat it because I was allowing some students to eat salad like animals. What did he discover? Bitter, prickly flesh and soil chunks. I asked him if he liked it. He said no. I encouraged him to try and pick a different veggie to munch on based on his own way of identifying tasty. What did he pick? Pea sprouts. So I showed him how to harvest and munch on a pea sprout. What did he discover? Sweet, stringy, and crunchy. He even got to eat the flower! What a lost moment it would have been to tell him NO.
When it rains...get outside and play with mud. We are all familiar with mud here in the NorthWest. Mud is fun. We have made mud sculptures, mud houses, mud families. We recently read a story in Spanish titled This House is Made of Mud. It is a great story of a house in the Southwest desert that incorporates and invites nature in and the home out. The kids enjoyed the story. We then went outside and attempted to build some mud structures. It was so rainy though that I couldn't make the right consistency for the mud and it became a mucky squishy mess.
How does your garden grow?
Talk to your plants. They need some encouragement and some of your time. If you haven't been in your gardens (at least on a slug killing rampage) because of the rain then get out there and fool around with your plants. Now is a good time to weed and replant what has been decimated by climate or pest.
Wait Wait Wait to plant things like tomatoes, pole beans, squashes etc. They don't care that they have less days of light they just want nice temps to grow in. You will be surprised just how fast a tomato will grow to harvest size.
Take a hike. Spring mushrooms have had an bonus season this year due to our colder temps and rain. There has been white out conditions above 7500 feet in the mountains. That means we will have some SUPER blooms this summer for wild flowers because they haven't had time to peak at the sun yet.
Garden Guru Katz
No comments:
Post a Comment