OCDC Garden Blog

Beds to Rest and Starting Fresh

2011-10-06T11:42:00.000-07:00

My name is Laura Harrison and I am the new AmeriCorps Farm to School Coordinator for OCDC. I am extremely excited to continue the efforts initiated by my predecessors, Jeremy and Kaitlin, and to develop some of my own ideas for the program.

For those of you who are visiting the blog for the first time, this is a place to share information, pictures, and updates about the gardens. Please feel free to post, ask questions, and give suggestions at any time!

As I begin my position, my main goal for the next few weeks is to get more acquainted with the gardens and the classes. I will be maintaining six garden sites from 2009-2011 at the Silverton, Settlemier, Cornelius, Linden, Jose Pedro, and Mulino schools and teaching nutrition and garden education at each place. Cipriano will also be added to the list this year, though due to space limitations their program will primarily consist of container gardening.

I was able to speak with some of the teachers and site supervisors recently and I got some great feedback and lots of enthusiasm which makes me even more motivated to make the program a success this year.

My discussions with the staff as well as information from my Oregon Tilth Organic Garden Class (thank you to Oregon Tilth for the generous scholarship), have given me some great ideas for lessons and as well as ways to improve the gardens.

I have lots of thoughts about what I want to accomplish this year and some of the goals I have come up with so far include:
-Develop garden programs at the Independence, Concordia, and
Gresham schools
-Increase family involvement with the garden projects
-Offer garden training for employees as much as possible
-Expand the Silverton site (more than an acre not being utilized!)
-Obtain fruit trees for the sites
-Get grants and donations for tools and materials
-Bring worm bins into the classroom (what kid doesn't like worms?!)

When I think about all of those goals at once I get a little overwhelmed as there is a ton to do and limited time and money! Being that it is fall though, I have some time to plan before the gardens really get going.

In fact the only maintenance that needs to be done right away is putting the beds to rest which is an activity I hope to begin next week at all the centers.

As I learned in my Oregon Tilth class, I will be planting cover crops to replenish the beds and prevent weeds from growing. I am choosing this method instead of mulching or composting because it will be nice to see the cover crops growing in the garden during cold winter months. I will post some pictures of the beds once the seeds are ready and in the group.

Before I end this post and get back to working on the gardens, I want to mention some wonderful donations we have already received. Burpee Seeds & Co., Home Depot, New Seasons, and Portland Nursey have all been very generous. I am truly thankful that the program is getting so much support from the community.

Looking forward to a great year!

2011-08-10T13:55:00.001-07:00

Its hard to believe that 11 months have flown by since I started working on the garden project with OCDC. Today is my last day at the OCDC office and my Americorps term is officially over this Friday. The last activity I was able to do with the children at the centers was to harvest the garlic that we planted back in September; this was the first thing we planted in most of the gardens so it was a good wrap up for me. The children and I had fun digging the garlic up, cleaning it, and bringing it to the cooks for use in the centers' lunches. Some kids even took bites out of the whole garlic without even peeling it, they didn't even care that it was spicy, they were just so excited to harvest something from the garden. I will sure miss the little ones. This whole garden project has been such as positive thing for me and I have learned so much through my work in the gardens and with the classes. Based on all the feedback I have received it has been an equally positive experience for the children, teachers and staff at OCDC; I have been so pleased with the amount of support and gratitude I have received here.

The children have, without a doubt, been the most rewarding part of the program. Seeing them light up when they are engaged in the garden and get so excited to eat anything they have grown themselves makes me really believe in the value of the school garden movement. I believe the garden project will have a lasting impact on the children who have been apart of it. I hope these memories stick with them in some way and help them development a preference for healthy natural foods and a respect for their food sources.

Furthermore, the impact of the school garden movement extends beyond those who it immediately benefits, and address many of our society's most challenging and pressing problems. The local food movement is social justice, food security, nutrition, fitness, environmental and economic sustainability, and it is fun!
I am excited to see how the garden project here grows and expands in the future. There is so much potential and enthusiam here that I believe the gardens at OCDC will only continue to improve. Thank you everyone for such a positive experience.

Happy gardening!!!

~Kaitlin

Tomato trellising and building hoop structures

2011-07-27T13:49:00.000-07:00

Our tomato plants are growing fast! Most of the plants have gotten big enough that some kind of support is necessary, so I have been busy trellising the plants when not working with the kids. At Mulino the tomatoes (as well as everything else) are growing so big so fast that I was hardly able to fit them into a trellis! We got our first ripe tomato today, which is not too bad considering we are still experiencing cool and cloudly weather at the end of July.

At Silverton, the deer are back. Over the winter and spring they only caused a mild disturbance, but during the summer they have been out in full force. Thus far our harvest out there has been pretty limited because the deer seem to come take a few bites of each thing the kids plant. Last week I decided to go ahead and build a hoop structure to hold up the deer netting in the summer, it will also work as a cloche over the winter, which is exciting because it will extend our growing season. The pictures are from our gardens at Jose Pedro and Silverton.

Gardening with toddlers at Mulino

2011-07-18T09:21:00.001-07:00

The gardens at our Mulino center are growing really well and we have had a couple great experiences taking the toddler classes out to help me plant and water. The toddlers are just as interested and engaged as the preschool age children; they were a little more timid at first, but now that they have been to the gardens a few times they get just as excited planting, watering and sampling the garden produce as the older children do. Additionally, we have had enough radishes and spinach ready for harvest at one time that I've been able to bring it all to the cafeteria to use in the center's lunches. Here are a few pictures from our last garden activity:

The teachers at Mulino have also started a gardening activity on their own, which I thought was an excellent idea and wanted to share. They used a mobile table to make a sensory learning garden, where they planted beans, cilantro, carrots, and peas. Since the table is on wheels, they can keep it inside some of the time, so the children can watch the plants grow and so they may protect the plants from the cold when necessary, and they can move it outside when it needs sunlight and warmth. Many teachers at other centers have approached me wanting to know which vegetables they could grow inside and I have reluctantly replied that most won't grow well indoors, especially without a grow light set up. This mobile garden idea is a great way around that- the children are still able to get to see the plants change from day to day, while the plants are able to get what they need to be healthy and strong. This is a wonderful idea for a scientific learning gardens as the kids can closely observe and monitor the plants and then speculate as to how much sunlight they need.
I hope to see this idea catch on at the other centers; I think the children and the teachers would love having a mobile garden of their own.

Digging for Potatoes

2011-07-13T13:57:00.000-07:00

Its hard to believe that its already Mid July, we are well into the middle of our growing season as well as our Migrant Head Start program, and I have only a few more weeks before my Americorps position is over. The garden project has taken a little different shape over the summer and our activities have been less structured- I show up during the classes outside and the kids come hang out with me, water the plants, plant new seeds, and sample the different vegetables. We have had all kinds of greens to sample: radishes, peas, strawberries, and everyones' favorite- carrots. Last week we had a great time at Jose Pedro- one of the teachers mentioned her class was making potato salad the next day with her class, which happened to be absolutely perfect because the potatoes were ready and I was going to have one of the classes help me dig them up. We harvested almost 30 little red potatoes from the one little corner of the garden. The kids loved the potato salad they made the next day. I was so happy the class was able to do this- these are the kinds of moments that make the school garden movement most worthwhile. The kids happily took part in every aspect of growing, harvesting, preparing and eating healthy delicious food, which I believe will help solidify their taste for healthy foods in the future. Here are some pictures from our potato digging adventure.

Making spinach smoothies on the last day at OPK

2011-05-24T14:24:00.001-07:00

Well the Oregon PreKindergarten program is over at the centers, which means I had to say goodbye to the little ones I've worked with all year. I sure will miss them, they are so excitable and loving; it has been a blast getting to play & explore in the garden with them. There wasn't a ton of food ready from the garden. We ate some radishes, which most of the kids loved. The teachers and I heard all kinds of funny exclamations after the kids tried the radishes, my favorite being: "It has tapatio in it!, I like it!" We munched on some cilantro, lettuce and arugula, and the kids chowed down on the baby chard as I thinned it. The last day at each center I used the gift card donated from the Alberta Street Coop to make spinach smoothies with the kids. The classes loved helping making the smoothies, they all took turns measuring out the ingredients and laughed and laughed when we turned on the blender. Most importantly, the kids loved the drinking the smoothie and were excited about spinach (which they had also grown earlier in the year). We made this recipe at Cornelius, JP, Linden, Silverton & Settlemeier and the kids, with the exception of maybe one or two, just loved it and wanted more.

Here is the recipe I used:
1 c Orange Juice
3/4 c Pineapple Juice
3/4 c Vanilla soymilk (can use regular milk or yogurt)
2 bananas
2 cups fresh spinach leaves

more spinach smoothies!

2011-05-24T14:12:00.000-07:00

Making smoothies at Cornelius

Making smoothies at Jose Pedro

Exploring the Jose Pedro garden

2011-05-24T14:02:00.000-07:00

About to try a radish

Exploring

These pictures were taken by Salvador from one of the OPK classes at JP

We've got an unintentional mushroom farm at Jose Pedro- Inky Caps maybe?

Thank you Master Gardeners

2011-05-24T13:57:00.000-07:00

I just wanted to say thank you to our master gardeners who volunteered their time to do garden trainings for the teachers at our centers. Elaine Smith of Marion County, Beret Halverson of Clackamas, and Tim Lanfri of Washington County came out between March & May to lead basic gardening classes and answer teachers' questions on caring for plants. They were all very interesting and informative, and came just in time for us to get to work in our gardens- Thank you!!!

Blueberry blossoms and baby plants

2011-04-22T09:27:00.000-07:00

This was a great week in our gardens! It was sunny and warm so the kids at Jose Pedro, Silverton, and Settlemeier actually got to explore around outside and take time to look at all the plants we have growing so far. It was also warm and dry enough that the kids could water, which is definitely their favorite activity. The kids at Settlemeier had fun yesterday drawing the plants in their journals and exploring the bolting spinach and baby radishes I had thinned.

Thank you to the Kiwanis Club of Silverton for donating two wonderful blueberry plants for our Silverton center. I can't get over how beautiful blueberries are in bloom and the kids are, of course, really excited to have blueberries growing in our garden.

The end of April means that we can really get started planting now, our main limitation at this point will just be space. Beets, carrots, potatoes, herbs, chard, spinach, radishes, lettuce, and edible flowers such as borage and nasturiums are all okay to sow outdoors at this point and we've got them all germinating already.

We have also have master gardeners come to some of our centers to give a presentation on basic gardening for the teachers. I think they went great! Many of the teachers are so enthusiastic about gardening and just had some questions on the basics like when & how to plant and water. This gave them a way to get some questions answered for free, thanks to the Master Gardener Program. Thank you to Elaine Smith of Marion County and Beret Halverson of Clackamas for your wonderful presentations! At these presentations I gave out packets of seeds and little packets of fertilizer I mixed for the teachers. For those who might want to make this organic fertilizer again on your own, here is the blend that I used:

5 parts Alfalfa/Linseed meal
5 parts Soft Rock phosphate
5 parts Mineral Mix (from Naomi's Organic Farm Supply)
4 parts Lime
1 part Kelp meal

I think this is a good basic organic blend that, mixed with some compost and soil, will help anyone get started. If you are really serious about wanting to establish a garden at your home or school I would consider getting a soil analysis to know precisely what nutrients your land will need to be productive. Information on how to take a soil sample and where to get it tested can be found here:

http://smallfarms.oregonstate.edu/soil-testing

Planting in space suits & garden overhaul

2011-04-19T09:51:00.001-07:00

The last frost date should be any day now, which opens the doors for planting all kinds of new things. The last few weeks, however, have alternated between sunny, warm (well warmer) beautiful days, or hail, dark clouds, and rain. I have still managed to get some nice days planting in our nice new garden beds with the kids. So far in our gardens we have garlic, peas, radishes, cilantro, potatoes, flowers, chard, and carrots growing, all of which the kids planted themselves. We also planted some bare root strawberry plants which were donated by the Noble Rot restaurant's rooftop garden (a big thank you to them- the kids are so excited about strawberries!).

As is the problem with many school garden programs, the growing season doesn't correlate with the school year so I have been struggling to get some food ready for the kids to eat before the end of the Oregon PreKindergarten Program in mid May. I am still on the look out for some more starter plants donations so we can have a little more ready in time for the kids to eat. But nonetheless, the kids love planting and watering as activities in themselves and I love seeing them light up when we get to play and engage in the garden. Most of the kids recognize me at this point and it makes me laugh when I come in the classroom and hear them shout 'Its the GARDEN LADY!' or sometimes I just hear them yell 'GARDEN!' or 'PLANTS!'. Below are some pictures of some of the kids from Linden when we planted carrots last week, make sure to notice the space suits they came out to the garden wearing. :)

Meanwhile, the grass out at the Silverton gardens has been slowly taking over all winter and I have been fighting a losing battle trying to keep it at bay. Also, the continual rain on our clay soil has caused the ground to sink in some places making the garden beds look very unlevel. After deliberating for a while on what to do about this Carla and I decided to do a complete overhaul of the beds. We shoveled out all the soil, leveled the ground, and put a weed barrier underneath the beds, all just in time for getting a delivery of soil to refill the beds this week. Whew! It was a lot of work, but it will save even more work for future gardening seasons at Silverton.

Thank you Portland Nursery!!!

2011-04-19T09:25:00.000-07:00

I would like to give a tremendous thank you to the Portland Nursery. They donated a second bag of seeds, this one even more generous than the first. This donation was enough for me to send seeds to every one of our centers. Where as before there were 6 gardens I have been working on and 2 more at other centers around the state, thanks to this donation I had enough to send a generous package of seeds to all 25 centers which means we will have some kind of gardening project or growing experiments at each one! This is very exciting news for our Garden Project! Thank you Portland Nursery!

Exploring Potatoes

2011-03-24T14:05:00.000-07:00

The kids are on spring break this week, but before they left I got a chance to plant some flowers and chard at some of the centers. I also brought in some potatoes that Carla donated, which had been sprouting at her house for a while- many had sprouts about a foot long already. This was great activity for the kids, I explained that the potato itself can be a seed, and that if you bury all but the top 2 or 4 leaves that roots will grow out of the stem, helping the plant drink more water and become stronger. The kids loved being able to touch and look at the sprouts growing out of potatoes. I brought in photos of what the plant looks like above and under the ground as well as some that were harvested and cleaned, which most of the kids recognized. The children are all really excited about growing flowers, I really hope some will bloom before the end of the Oregon PreKindegarten program in May. Here are some pictures of the kids at Settlemeier:

Container gardening & journals at Silverton

2011-03-11T09:56:00.001-08:00

Container gardening at Settlemeier

2011-03-11T09:49:00.001-08:00

While its still rainy and cold outside we have been doing planting indoors of some hardy plants and then bringing them outside to the garden. The kids get more and more excited about planting, the more familiar they get with it. If there is any doubt about how to get kids to eat healthy, I am convinced that the answer is to have them grow the food themselves. These kids are completely ecstatic about things like garlic, radishes, spinach and cilantro. More than anything, the kids love to water the plants. Its a good thing the containers drain well!

Soil at Jose Pedro!

2011-03-11T09:40:00.000-08:00

Thank you to Tim Iba and John Vuylsteke for getting soil into our Washington county garden beds! The bed at Jose Pedro is filled and almost ready to be planted in just in time for spring. Next week I will amend the soil and we'll be ready to go!

Spring is almost here!

2011-02-22T11:19:00.000-08:00

Spring is around the corner, which means that our we'll be able to start planting in our gardens soon! I am definitely looking forward to it. I have been doing indoor garden related activities with the kids at 5 centers this winter, making garden journals, sprouting seeds, planting spinach in containers indoors, making drawings of vegetables to turn into signs for the garden. We've kept busy but I'm sure the kids will really enjoy getting outside and getting their hands dirty, I know I will.

Beginning of March we'll start with peas, spinach, radishes, and arugula. I'm hoping there will be a fair amount of stuff to harvest by the end of the Oregon Pre-Kindergarten program in May. Then come in the Migrant Head Start kids who will really get to enjoy the fruits (and vegetables) of our garden, summer is when we get to grow and harvest all the warm weather plants that people love so much: tomatoes, peppers, etc.

Heres a short list of the some of the things you can start planting in your garden:

End of February:
Peas

Early March:
Cilantro
Parsley
Arugula
Radishes
Turnips
Spinach
Swiss Chard
Snap Peas
Snow Peas

Under Cloche:
Beets, Lettuce, Broccoli, Cabbage

Late March:
Potatoes

Sow indoors to transplant:
Tomatoes
Peppers
Celery

This is of course by no means a comprehensive list of what can be started. If you have any questions about this or what varieties of the crops to plant, feel free to post a question or you can consult Seattle Tilth's 'The Maritime Northwest Garden Guide', which the best planting calendar I've found and has been indispensable in planning OCDC's gardens this year.

Happy Planting!

THANK YOU!!!!

2011-02-07T10:51:00.001-08:00

We have received an incredibly generous amount of donations this year, without which OCDC's garden project would not be possible. Their donations will help ensure that our garden program will be successful this year, and that our children will have plenty of fresh produce to grow and eat all year round. On behalf of the teachers, staff, and especially the children at OCDC, I would like to extend my deepest gratitude to the following business for their support.

Al's Garden Center:
A coupon for 12- 4" vegetable plants, which we will use as soon as it warms up

High Mowing Organic Seeds:
50 packs of assorted high quality vegetable & flower seeds

Home Depot:
Two coupons for $25 off, which we used for containers for the centers

Johnny's Selected Seeds:
24 packs of assorted high quality vegetable & flower seeds

Portland Metro:
4 compost bins for our sites in Clackamas and Washington counties

Portland Nursery:
73 packs of assorted high quality vegetable & flower seeds

Territorial Seeds:
73 packs of assorted high quality vegetable & flower seeds

Wilco:
A $75 gift card, which we will use on much needed garden supplies and soil amendments

Thank you so much for your contribution. We are so excited to put these supplies to use this garden season. Stay posted for more updates on OCDC's garden project!

How do seeds grow?

2011-01-12T13:27:00.001-08:00

Its the new year! now that the irregular holiday schedule is over and I am done with most of the preparatory work for the year, I will be out at the centers doing garden lessons on a regular basis. While it is still too cold to start planting, I'll be doing indoor garden related activities designed to help the kids understand the lifecycle of a plant and where food comes from. Here's a couple of the plans I have in store for January & February:

Make a garden journal- to reflect on what they learn through the year

Seed sprouting- to observe how a plant grows: what it looks like, how long it takes

Indoor planting herbs- observe more on how plants grow, what they need to thrive

Books- We just got some great new preschool appropriate garden books for the centers, that will help familiarize the kids with new fruits and vegetables as well as help them spell, count, and read! These big beautifully illustrated books will be great rainy day activities for the kids. These are the ones we will be using:

Eating the Alphabet: Fruits & Vegetables from A to Z, by Lois Ehlert
From the Garden: A counting book about growing food, by Michael Dahl
Growing Vegetable Soup, by Lois Ehlert

At Silverton we've already done the sprouting activity and the kids have had a chance to reflect on it.
All that is needed for this activity is a ziploc bag, some seeds and some wet papertowels. I used leftover cover crop seeds and soaked them the night before to help with germination. The teachers and I helped the kids with this activity so some of the baggies are neater than others. As the seed sprouts the kids will get to observe what the roots look like and how long they take to grow. I figure this is a good activity to start off a new year of the program. I'll post more pictures as we take them

Lasagna mulching at Silverton

2011-01-12T13:13:00.000-08:00

Silverton already had two big raised beds installed last year so we didn't need to install any there this time around. Yet there is so much space out there I wanted to expand the garden so we can grow as much as possible this year- Everyone is so excited and supportive about the garden program over there, we want it to be a productive year! Last year Jeremy had cleared out another area and built a couple mound-style raised beds, but these have become over grown with grass already making them the perfect candidate for the lasagna mulching activity with the kids. There are 5 classes at Silverton, I had each class lay down all their lasagna mulching material in a designated space. In addition to the two 4x20' beds on location each class will now have their own little garden bed this year to take ownership and be proud of. There're not much to look at now, but they will be!

New garden beds

2011-01-04T11:08:00.001-08:00

While the kids were out on break the facilities folk and I were busy at work outside installing the new raised garden beds at several of our centers. Special thanks to John and Josh in Washington County (it was cold and raining when we built the beds in WA county) and Julio at Mulino for their help!!! We installed 5 beds in three days, in various sizes and shapes depending on the location, and then sheet mulched the beds to kill of the grass and build the soil. I am really proud- they look great!See below for pictures and more information of lasganga/sheet mulching... (Click on the pictures to see bigger versions)

New garden bed at Settlemeier, Marion County

2011-01-04T11:05:00.001-08:00

Setting up the timbers at Settlemeier

Lasgana mulching- layering cardboard and coffee grinds

The finished bed at Settlemeier!

New garden beds at Mulino, Clackamas County

2011-01-04T10:59:00.001-08:00

Lasagna Mulching at Mulino:
Step 1- laying down layers of cardboard
Step 2- layering a nitrogen source (in this case coffee grinds)

Step 3- Layering another carbon source, maple leaves

The finished beds at Mulino!

New garden beds- Washington County

2011-01-04T10:46:00.000-08:00

John & Josh cutting up burlap to top the lasgana mulching at Cornelius

The finished garden Bed at Cornelius

Finished bed at Jose Pedro (the containers inside the beds are temporarily holding down the burlap- it was windy!)

Finished bed at Jose Pedro

Lasagna mulching

2010-12-13T09:57:00.000-08:00

The next two weeks I'll be doing lasagna mulching at some of the centers. This is an easy way to prepare new garden beds or build soil for older ones, without digging up sod or pulling weeds (although you want to remove some weeds such as blackberry, bindweed, morning glory or quackgrass, which the layering process won't smother).

Lasagna mulching consists of alternating layering sources of carbon & nitrogen. You want to start about 6 months before you intend on planting, to allow the materials to fully decompose. We'll be doing this for the beds we plant in later in the spring.
First mow the grass as low as possible. The you start with layering several sheets of cardboard (a carbon source) over your future bed; this will block out sunlight and smother the grass. Wet the cardboard thoroughly, then add a 1 inch layer of nitrogen, followed by a 1 inch layer of carbon. Repeat the layering or nitrogen and carbon 3 times and end with a layer or carbon. On top of this you can layer some burlap sacks and cover with black plastic. In about 4-6 months, remove the plastic and check to see if the materials have fully decomposed. The burlap sacks will also decompose, but if they are taking too long you can removed and compost them. The rest should like and smell like fresh soil when it is ready. The add some compost and get to planting!

Sources of carbon: sawdust, leaves, corn stalks, pine needles, peat moss, newspaper, cardboard, straw and hay.

Sources of nitrogen: coffee grounds, kitchen scraps, composted manures, alfalfa pellets, vegetable scraps, fresh grass clippings and cottonseed, soybean and blood meal.

We received all our supplies for this project for free:
*Cardboard- in large quantities from Costco
*Coffee grinds- starbucks
*Carbon- leaves (I didn't even have to collect them myself, I put an add on craigslist & someone was happy for me to take their bagged leaves of their hands)
*Burlap sacks- stumptown coffee roasters.

Since I am using coffee grinds as a nitrogen source, it will acidify the soil, so I will be adding lime over the top layer of carbon.

For more information check out the OSU extension's resources:
http://extension.oregonstate.edu/news/story.php?S_No=1080&storyType=garden

http://extension.oregonstate.edu/lane/sites/default/files/documents/Lasagna.pdf

Making Garden Journals

2010-12-13T09:06:00.000-08:00

The kids made garden journals at Silverton this month. This is a simple indoor winter garden activity that they really enjoyed. We will use these the rest of the year for the kids to draw and write about what they learned in the gardens this year. Supplies needed: poster board, paper, string, a hole punch, some glue sticks and some pictures of vegetables for the covers.

Compost!

2010-12-02T14:08:00.000-08:00

Thank you to Portland Metro! They've just agreed to donate four compost bins for our Garden Project, for our gardens in Washington and Clackamas counties. This will be a great addition to our project, giving us a place for garden waste for now, and eventually, a place for the cafeterias to compost all their kitchen scraps.

Everyone should compost! When vegetable scraps decompose anaerobically (ie: buried without oxygen in a landfill) they release methane, which is one of the leading greenhouse gases. On the other hand, when your vegetable scraps decompose in an aerated compost pile, they don't release greenhouse gases, they just turn into rich organic material that does wonders for the overall health of your soil, and therefore, your garden. Try it out! Even if you haven't started a garden yet, you can create a compost pile in your yard- just pile up all your kitchen waste somewhere in your yard closest to that neighbor you don't like (just kidding! aerated compost doesn't smell bad either, especially if you compost using a worm bin). Just make sure you leave out the meats, grease, and oils- these don't decompose as well and can attract pests such as rodents.

Composting can be as simple as piling up kitchen scraps in a bin and letting nature runs its course, or it can become quite an art & science of balancing carbon, nitrogen, and other micronutrients and cultivating an entire microbial universe. For more tips on the different methods of compost, for starting a compost bin, or where to get one, you can check out Metro's composting guide at:

http://www.metro-region.org/index.cfm/go/by.web/id=553

Cover crops and garlic!

2010-11-18T11:20:00.000-08:00

Well we've gotten in the last bit of planting one can do this time of year here in the Northwest. At Silverton this kids, teachers and I tore up last year's plants and broadcasted cover crops (winter peas). The kids had a great time tearing up plants and carrying them to the compost in the pint-sized wheelbarrows. They even found some remaining onions and carrots.
Highlight (and lesson) of the day- At one point we had about four or five kids standing in the bed shoveling dirt out of the bed onto the surrounding ground. Note to self- Having a raised bed does not necessarily delineate where to stand in the eyes' of kids. Make sure the kids know too stand OUTSIDE the bed, and keep the dirt INSIDE. It was almost too funny to put an end to, but standing in the beds compacts the soil, which is no good for our gardens.
The last couple of weeks I have been at Silverton, Jose Pedro, Linden & Cornelius planting garlic with the classes, which is about the only thing you can plant this time of year. Most of the kids didn't even know what garlic was. When I asked what it was I heard over and over- "a pumpkin!" (the kids just finished learning about pumpkins), or "una cebolla!"- nonetheless, they were so excited to plant, water, and to have their hands in the dirt. and I was really impressed how many of the kids knew what plants need to grow. These are smart little ones! I think this will be a fun year...

2010-2011 school gardens!

2010-10-27T14:06:00.000-07:00

Well just as it is beginning to get really rainy and cold out here in Oregon, the OCDC garden programs are getting their start. My name is Kaitlin Berger and I'll be following in the footsteps of Jeremy as the Americorps Farm to School Coordinator for the 2010-2011 school year (and summer).

I've been busy for the past few weeks getting to know the program, and the folks at OCDC, and we have got some exciting plans for expanding last year's gardens and starting some new ones. This year I will be working with the teachers and staff at Silverton and Linden to expand the gardens started last year. Silverton has so much space available, we have some big plans: fruit trees, worms, compost, winter gardening cloches, maybe even a trellis or a seating area- it will be an exciting year! On the list to get new raised bed gardens are the Woodburn/Settlemeier, Mulino, Jose Pedro, and Cornelius sites. Odell and Madras did amazing jobs out at their sites last year and hopefully will keep up their momentum this year. Finally, I hope to get some container gardens going at Cipriano and Main Street by the end of the year.

Our long term goal is to have a garden at every center and get to where the gardens provide a substantial amount of food for the students. However, this year’s focus will be on continuing to lay the foundation of the program: getting the gardens started or expanded, building soil fertility, solidifying the garden programs role in the classroom, creating a network of resources and support, getting the teachers training in gardening, and developing garden lesson plans. Whew! We will be busy! We have a long list of vegetables we hope to plant come spring, many of them items the kids may harvest and sample after harvest- peas, carrots, herbs, edible flowers, tomatoes, radishes, etc. I can't wait to get my hands in the dirt!

Hopefully, this blog will help the OCDC garden community to keep up to date with each other. Please feel free to post questions, pictures, etc.
and I will be posting more updates about the gardens soon. I'm looking forward to an exciting year!

~Kaitlin

2010-07-08T10:03:00.000-07:00

2010-07-08T09:43:00.000-07:00

2010-07-08T09:32:00.000-07:00

Think BLUE...it is the new Green

2010-07-08T08:44:00.000-07:00

HOT HOT HOT. Man what wierd weather we get here sometimes. From record lows to record highs in a few weeks? How about this for a fact- we had a drop of 32 degrees in 40 minutes yesterday on the Coast. Temps climbed to 90+ degrees and plummeted to upper 50's as the sun began to set. 32 degrees!!! That is an amazing feat and says something about the power of our ocean. The ocean makes ALL of our weather so we farmers need to respect the land as much as the ocean. Think Green is so last year. THINK BLUE...it is the new green.

The gardens have been growing well. Our centers have organized some watering schedules and are beginning to take more control over the care of their gardens. Perfect timing really as they need more work now than ever. The centers have begun to plant, water, harvest, and play in the gardens as we had hoped. Looks like it only took some good weather to get them out there using the resource. The goal of creating a sustainable project seems possible though we won't know until we see some of the center's own work next year.

The crops are looking fine though not stellar. We had to use old seed and lower quality starts due to budget constraints and lack of donations. I spent some money buying us some more things that will produce heavy crops with little care. I mostly bought squash, beans, and sun flowers. Sunflowers operate in a simlar fashion to corn (in the three sisters garden) but are better for the bees/bugs, prettier, and readily seed. As they are not governed by GMO crop pollination, I feel like this is the improved three sisters...I call it Tres Amigos. Corn has been sequestered by agtech companies but sunflowers are free from tinkering of that "nature". But I do get ahead of myself. Like I stated above. I purchased some squash, beans, and sunflowers for our centers and planted them. They are growing well and I hope will be the main product from our gardens for summer season. I hope to plant some winter crops here next week when the temps drop. I have a plot in Silverton that needs some vetch removed before it seeds and that is where I will be placing some broccoli, cabbage, birds nest gourds and goblin eggs. If I can get my hands on some kales that would be wonderful.

The year is almost up for me and my AmeriCorps year. With 5 gardens in the ground
and more requests each week from our centers to build, teach, and grow I think our program will continue to expand. The success of this years garden will be measured not in harvest but in interest. In smiles. In understanding. In teaching moments and translated words. Our gardens have grown our centers too. They have a resource now that can feed minds and bodies and I believe they will continue to shape the way OCDC centers operate.

The children have been using big tools in the garden to rake, hoe, dig, and cultivate. It has been a relief for my back and my hands. It also warms those kiddos up for a sweet nap which I know the teachers appreciate. A mind like a childs needs the stimulation of Nature to envelop, connect, and expand those huge brains of theirs. The connectivity of nature is observable BY OUR OWN MEANS of interpretation. Curriculum involves too many other entities that don't reside within our faculties. But nature plays by rules we innately comprehend. These gardens will be a savior for our teachers on tough winter days. Days when curriculum won't work. When kids want to be anywhere but stuck indoors and love to let you know about it. It is my hope that OCDC will be forever changed and will continue to grow gardens to grow minds.

Some great pics. No explanations necessary.

2010-06-21T12:27:00.000-07:00

2010-06-21T12:22:00.000-07:00

Sow...is it summer yet?

2010-06-21T11:07:00.001-07:00

The Solstice has arrived and with it no more predictions for rain for the week. The hot June sun is doing its job by warming away threats of precipitation by mid morning each day and sending those clouds up and out of the way. Warmer temps seem to be reaching normal levels ranging from 55-80 during the days. The gardens have shown signs of improvement as well. The tomatoes have greened up and are starting to spread, the peas and greens are growing well. In Silverton, I made another 200 square feet of gardening space by removing sod and planting vetch and grass. Then I hoed out the grass a few months later and double dug the beds to raise them up. I made one long running bed about 25 feet long and 3 feet wide and 5 raised hills for planting my hot crops and storage crops. The soil was workable and next year it will be better because I will use two types of winter cover crops to give the soil good protection and increase the tilth. Linden's garden has been doing better after receiving the most rain of the other gardens (because of its proximity to the coast).

I gained two more centers who are anxious to get gardens started; they are Jose Pedro and Settlemeier. The buzz about these gardens and the activities our children are doing with them has excited centers all over Oregon. My job is looking busier and busier as the gardens warm up and people warm up to the gardens. Yippee! The interesting aspect to these two new centers is that they lack ground space for food production. Each center at OCDC is individual and take on the terms of Head Start in creative ways. It takes time to analyze what would work best for each center. The centers lack gardening space but they will have some grand container gardens. I am great at container gardening. I hope to dot their outdoor space with massive containers full of food that is visually stunning. I hope to create an ornamental look with a food functionality. So...what plants will I be using. Well I will absolutely be using Swiss Chard because it is my favorite plant to grow right now. They might contain Kale, Fava Beans, Winter Peas, Parsley, Leeks, Cilantro, Carrots and Parsnips, cabbage, and broccoli. We will also be planting blueberries in containers. We hope to create a stable container garden practice for each center. I hope that this new garden style will be applicable to our home garden plots as well as our centers who similarly lack safe grounds for food producing. I hope to show our centers and the readers that space is not the biggest limiting factor for gardening among cost, access to water, creativity and time.

The new crop of kids has been fun. They are all sons and daughters of seasonal or migrant workers who have traveled to Oregon for our busy ag season. The ranges of skills and behaviours these children exhibit is wide so the classes have been a bit tougher. I am adapting the teaching style for these classes to be more camp based. There are crafts, story telling, harvesting, etc in shorter and easier to understand segments. This week we will pick a plant and draw it and write a few words about it on some paper. It will become a book of plants for each center to have made by the children and for the children. It will compromise a series of arts, observations, and literacy work for our children. My Spanish has been getting much better. I am able to understand a lot more of what my children mumble and have been able to communicate better with them and our teachers. I have been excited to use my Spanish in each class. I am looking forward to better weather and bigger crops. Good luck in your gardens and classes!

In the photos that precede this post you can see our children at Silverton harvesting some salad. They gave it to their kitchen to cook salad for them today! What a treat for all of us.

How does your garden grow?
TIME TO PROPAGATE YOUR TOMATOES: You like to pull of those "suckers" right? It makes your plant grow stouter and stronger right? Meh...maybe. Don't throw them in the compost. Take your suckers ( at least 2 inch long ones) and propagate them. With the soft start to our summer providing cloudy and humid days, you have got a great climate for producing some more plants. If you get em now, you might be able to pull off some more tomatoes or replace ones beat up by the rains.

Love Lupines: Need a beautiful native perennial that withstands lots of water and a bit of shade? Need one that fixes nitrogen to improve your soil and your plants health? Need one of the first plants to return from the blast zone of St. Helen's 20years ago? LUPINE BABY! Use it, love it, save the seeds and spread it.

Recipe: Chop chard and greens to chip sizes. Chop some of your beets into bite size coins or dice sized cubes. Crumble in some goat cheese, your fave nuts, a little olive oil, and a citrus squeeze. Eat voraciously or not at all.

Need some gardening advice? Post a question to the blog and we will try and answer it for you.

Enjoy the weather and get outside this week--Garden Guru Katz

2010-06-07T10:35:00.000-07:00

2010-06-07T10:11:00.000-07:00

Whether the Weather Will Change

2010-06-07T09:17:00.000-07:00

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

2010-05-04T11:19:00.000-07:00

2010-05-04T11:04:00.000-07:00

Oh MAY Goodness!

2010-05-04T10:04:00.000-07:00

OH MAY GOODNESS@!@!

It is time to start really getting to work in those gardens. The weather has still been telling us that it is cold but don't fret my gardening friends. Soon it will change. One way to make the weather better: DON'T believe the weather! Out here the weather can seem way worse on paper (or screen) than it feels on your face as you scramble to plug every hole in your garden with veggies and flowers.

I have to admit something to you now. Garden Voyeurism...I have it bad. I love watching gardeners watch their gardens. We have all heard the idea of "zoning out" and all of its variations. What about Zoned in? When I stare at my garden for hours I am not "out" in the literal sense but "in". I am INto my garden. I am INto my creative. I am IN my nuturing (or is it naturing). Those moments are paramount for me and I am usually IN them OUTdoors. Often people go to the woods or to the space they define as wild to relax and unwind. To "get away from it all". The "it all" in this phrase would be the city grind. I have a different idea about this. I go to the wild for bewilderment and charge. BE WILD. Bewilder. Bewilderment. To me the modern definition of the word bewilderment does not capture the proximal and primordial meaning. This word means to be as the wild are (which to some of us is baffling). The plants in the glory of eating the sun to make manna for animals resting in the shade of the trees. I go to the woods to be charged up enough to use my energy when I return to the city. I am not like the animals unless I am with them. Unlike them, I go to the garden. I go to the mountain. My energy from there is used here.

The harvest I hoped to pick by now is still in the ground waiting for warmer days. The carrots and peas will be growing great until June. I am happy that our plants are ready from ACS; they will be transplanted into our gardens next week. Our gardens will have tons of transplants as well as beans, sunflowers, and other crops hand planted by the children. It seems we never stop seeding around here but I can't wait to start seeing all the growing happen. I am already getting ahead of myself trying to perfectly time my cover crop seeding and I have not even seen a tomato!

The kids played with WORM BINS this week. As you can see; we had a great time.

Things to do: BUY BEANS AND PLANT THEM EVERYWHERE
Harden off your transplants by sticking them outside half the day.
Prune up your perennials to keep them blooming.
Make some compost/manure tea and amend your beds with nutrients including calcium and magnesium for those heavy fruiting warm crops.
WEED WEED WEED!

Things to enjoy: The sun when it pokes through the clouds. For a moment you can feel your skin buzzing.
The ants that take all your surface seeded annuals into healthier tunnels beneath the ground. Nature works for me!
The peas as they fill out those leaves and grip up your trellis with their fingers.

Things to look forward to: Jamaican Sandwich= Slice of bread with butter toasted. Place thick cut garden tomato on bread and thick slice cheese. Melt in oven and consume immediately.
FRESH BASIL!
Swimming in the rivers.

Garden Guru Katz

2010-04-27T08:56:00.000-07:00

2010-04-27T08:41:00.000-07:00

Shine On Part 2

2010-04-27T08:23:00.000-07:00

Yeah! It is raining. I love the rain. It tells me that I don't have to water this week. The gardens are really starting to look good. Silverton is a bit slow to start but I am confident it will pick up in the next few weeks. I was hoping to have some stronger spring crops by May but there are a few reasons that it isn't as strong. In Silverton the straw has not fully composted yet and I didn't remove it for planting. Straw can suck out the nitrogen from your plants in its decomposition so I believe this is happening along side the fact that the bed is a bit rough for seedling germination. I haven't removed anything because in 3 weeks we will be planting most of our summer crops as transplants and they won't have a problem. Tomatoes, Tomatillos, Peppers, etc. We are also planting cucumbers, squash, and sunflowers. In Linden the garden is looking fabulous. With a different soil composition and warmer temps the Linden garden is growing strong. Last week we picked and thinned a bunch with the kids. We ate all of our thinnings ofcourse! Our radishes, spinach, salads, and peas look great there. We built a mudman out in Silverton. A mudman is very similar to a snowman but made with mud. His hair is made from sod and his arms are made from bamboo. He will grow and change throughout the season, eventually "melting" back into the ground.

Our plants will be delivered to Silverton and to Linden with the ACS Plant Project tour. I will be delivering the plants by bus to the center. It will be a great day!
Our Adult Container Class is coming up soon. We will have more information this week about when and where it will be taking place.

Things to do: Dance in the rain. It's fun.
Take kids on a seed walk. Put some yucky old socks on over your kids shoes. Go for a walk in the park, on the trail, or in your yard. Be sure to have your child run and walk all over the weedy areas. Come back inside and take off those socks. Inspect them for seeds and plant what you find.
Gather up some rain water in a bucket for your plants. CONSERVE
Split up your worm bins and gather their much desired castings for your hot crop starts. Place some in the hole you transfer to for some boost and lessened shock.
Eat all of your thinnings.
Eat all of your rosemary flowers. Pick them off and use them as a great decorative and flavorful flare to your dishes.
Take your neighbor's or friend's dog out for a walk.
Begin hardening off your starts and transplants. They should have at least 2 weeks of time spent outside for a short portion of the day.
Save up that space in your garden. You might want to hold off putting anything down if it will just be moved or shaded by your hot crops. Plan accordingly.

Good luck and Get growing.

Garden Guru Katz

2010-04-19T11:37:00.000-07:00

2010-04-19T11:27:00.000-07:00

Shine on: Colors of Spring and Stronger Plants

2010-04-19T10:03:00.001-07:00

It was a warm weekend for us in the Willamette Valley. Warm days with filtered sunlight and some of the first nights around 50 degrees have converted our gardens from seedlings to vegetating plants. Our seedlings are growing well. In Linden, the soil has much less straw and the seedlings are growing faster. We used cardboard for sheet mulching in Linden. In Silverton (which is a bit colder on average than Linden) the seedlings are still emerging. The peas in both locations look great and I am expecting some bigger plants by the end of the week. The weather is looking pretty good and I won't have to water this week. I am hopeful for some decent spring crops unless the deer get them in Silverton. I have got to get that deer fence up!
I believe most of the crops should be ready by mid May and into June. In May we will be harvesting most of our garden space. All of the food will be cooked in the scratch kitchens and what is not cooked will be used for investigation with the children. We will be replanting the beds with summer crops like beans, tomatoes, cucumber, squash etc. The children just had a lab lesson and scavenger hunt last week. We did a lab observing plants as they rested in different colored water in pots. This week we will be studying 6 plants in differing conditions exploring water variables, light variables, and nutrient variables. There will be extensions throughout this lesson to follow the children's interests. We are also beginning the grow and eat your salad project again. It is a short month long lesson involving growing salad in small pots with our OPK programs. At the harvest, the teachers and children make several salad dishes and serve them to each other. Our seedlings from ACS seem to be doing well. They are starting a long term hardening off process by visiting the harshness of life outside the greenhouses several times a week. At this stage in the year, our greenhouses are producing plants that will be too big for our resources and space. It is a good thing May is around the corner.

What should you be planting out there: Get out there and start planting some carrots, radish, beets, chards, salads, mustard greens, kale, asian greens and cabbages, broccoli, cauliflour, and cabbage. Keep what you can but save some space for your bigger crops like tomatoes and squashes.

Good things: Salads and onions enjoy growing close. I have seen carrots and green onions do well together too.

Stay away from this: Don't plant your onions next to your beans or peas.

Idea for the day: Got some extra sod? Got some extra materials around the garden? Why don't you make a mud structure. Mud structures can provide a lot of fun for any garden. Mud structures can be anything from small huts to giant faces. I am hoping to build structure for Silverton out of removed sod and extra rocks. I will be building a simple living tower. It will end up looking like a mudman (like a snowman but with mud instead of snow) and have plants growing for details like the face and hair.

The pics above are from a trip to the Tulip Festival. The children were all smiles the whole time. What a fun experience.
We

Seeding Pics

2010-03-22T12:26:00.000-07:00

Look at these sprouts planting seeds!

Spring Seeding before Spring Break

2010-03-22T10:35:00.000-07:00

Spring Break! Woohoo! Well the kids are off at least. Just had a great week with them. This week we had some beautiful weather; sunny and warm. I decided to plant all of our Spring seeds with the children. Every kid except for one class was able to plant seeds in their garden. The garden is designed to be nutritional first and educational second. This simply means that I had a detailed planting guideline that the kids had to follow to ensure prductivity. The fun aspects of the garden are in the main bed too but are mostly concentrated outside the beds. We will be planting big pumpkins and sunflowers in super rich hills. I am using bits and pieces of many aggie styles but meeting all oregon organic standards. I borrowed some close planting techniques to limit evaporation from Biodynamic principles and I also did some companion planting.

So what did we plant? We planted peas, radishes, carrots, spinach, chard, nigella, onions and lettuce. They should all be harvested at different times and be out of our garden for Summer planting in May. The kids were so excited to plant. They were all smiles in the sun with seeds in their hands. I asked the kids to use some magic words with their seeds. Kids came up with some funny expressions for them. "GOOD LUCK SEEDS" was a big hit though. Each kid held seeds and prepared their seed bed for planting. Each kid wished their seeds good luck and planted them in rows. Now the kids are gone. I watered the beds and am hoping the rain will do the job until later this week. I am hopeful that there will be seeds sprouting by Wed. I am worried about slugs and deer (children would normally be on this list but they are on Spring Break so the seeds have some time to establish). I plan to kill slugs so lovers of sluggers beware. I manually remove them until it gets too crazy and use a organic and natural repellent for them (usually a cocktail of peppermint, garlic, chili oil, and hot sauce). For the deer, oh brother. I might use some repellents but honestly I am looking to just build a netting and raise it high enough above the plant to not bother them as they veg out and low enough so the deer cannot get their snouts under and chomp em down. It will be some row covers or bird netting raised up on bamboo. We got some more soil for the Silverton garden and some containers for the Multnomah, Washington, and Marion counties. I am building some NICHE container gardens for the local centers. I am building some vertical gardens to out of burlap. I will plant them with nasturtium, herbs, and flowers. The other containers will be for pot friendly plants like beans, salads, etc.

Next week we will be analyzing our garden. It will be an outdoor class. The kids will get to look at their seedlings, thin some areas, water, measure temp and size etc. It will be a great time for the bugs too as April is notorious with pests. It will be an outdoor exploration class. I am hoping to get the kids observationally overloaded (almost) so when they return to class they can fill their journals with an assortment of pictures and imaginations. We are also gathering the last supplies for some indoor plant starts. Just a heads up, American Center for Sustainability has completed their planting. They also just got published in two cover stories from Edible Portland and the Oregonian. Check them out on facebook or their website.

Enjoy the perfect planting weather...GOOD LUCK SEEDS!

It is SOW time to start planting

2010-03-15T11:55:00.000-07:00

Is it warming up or cooling down? I can't tell at all. It seems typical that we get that warm burst in Feb or March and then its back to cold until late April. With the temps staying under 40 at night; it doesn't look like planting will happen until the Thursday and Friday when warmer temps are projected. The children and the centers all want to plant so badly so we will try and initiate some indoor starts in the next couple weeks. This week the children did a great job making their binoculars and in some cases monoculars. The pictures below show them in their classes with the project. Here were some of their thoughts:

"I get to use my binoculars outside and inside. I am drawing my name on mine"
"I can look through this to see the garden"
"I will see bugs and dirt and plants"
"When are we gonna plant out in the garden Maestro Jeremy"
"Maestro, are we going to go outside"
"Will you eat lunch with us"

The last comment was one of my favorites. As a Farm to School program, I am very interested in not only providing high quality local food for OCDC but also sharing the meals with the children. Meal time is a very important social act that is often not used to the full potential. OCDC cooks all the meals for the children and they are well fed while attending our centers. Although it is hard for me to squish into those teeny tiny chairs, I am having a wonderful time with the kids at meal time. During meal time, the children get to speak freely about everything they wish to talk about. I encourage them to tell me stories and talk about their experiences out of school. It is a great time to take the temperature so to speak about what the children's interests are and what types of personalities make up the classroom. The garden class option this week will be less involved in making things and more involved in observations and imaginative play. The first classes are useful for me to understand and define the educational role this position will have in the future.

So what is to come? This week I am delivering the seeds to the programs. Thanks to High Mowing (VT), Territorial (OR) and Seeds of Change (NM) for their wonderful seed donations. They have given us enough seeds to run the whole garden this season. They will get to start some seedlings indoors as well as plant some outdoors if the weather holds out. It will be a simple planting but will take a WHOLE lot of planning and structure to ensure that the seeds are properly sowed and taken care of for the weekend. I imagine lots of squared off and lined spaces where the children can move from one section the next, plant a seed, cover it and move to the next center. It will be regimented planting outdoors, but indoors the children will have a little less structure for planting so they can discover by themselves the purposefulness of precision planting. Check back for some more photos next week of the planting.

Pics include some children showing me their window germination project. Seeds stay in moist towels inside plastic bags attached to the window. Watch them germinate and move toward the light. The other pics are children working or playing with their new binoculars and monoculars.

2010-03-08T18:08:00.000-08:00

March 8 Curriculum 2

pix

2010-03-08T10:27:00.001-08:00

March Outdoors and Know your soil

2010-03-08T09:52:00.000-08:00

Last week we started the garden based curriculum for our centers. What a successful week it was. I visited three centers and delivered curriculum and taught the kids. It was great to finally get some time with the children; being in the office so much the past six months made me forget just exactly who I am working with and what I am doing. The grassroots level is the place for me because I can engage the program head on with my staff and students. It is hard to work "for" people and much easier to work "with" people. If you want to know how you can help a certain population; get outside and get to their community. Donate with your hands and not your wallets. Not only will you help more; you will connect and create newness.
The children really enjoyed spending time learning about the gardens. We talked all about the rules most recently. BE SAFE>BE RESPONSIBLE>BE RESPECTFUL there are also sub rules LISTEN>LOOK>AND BE GENTLE. Keeping the rules positive and simple is the easiest way. I don't like rules that start with DON'T or NEVER. Rules like that take the power of learning out of the situation. Keeping it positive allows for introspection...for instance. "Timmy do you think you are being responsible and respectful of the garden when you rip up the plants?" as opposed to "Timmy, DON'T you understand the rules? DON'T do that!" This week we will be building some viewfinders for the children out of tp rolls. I want them to have these binoculars for the entire season. It will be a fun tool to use but it will also bring the childrens attention to observation. It will keep them busy looking as opposed to touching which they will have time for. We are holding back on planting for a few weeks. I was hopeful that the weather would cooperate but it seems a cold front is settling in for another week. THE LOWEST SNOW LEVELS for us this year are predicted...don't you love Oregon? It works out well because we will be working on some indoor planting and other lessons for several more weeks. Other than building binoculars we will be prepping for some indoor planting with the kids. The gardens are looking good. I am shallowly fluffing up the soil to prepare the beds for some seeds. Soil temps are in the 50's and 60's during sunny days. Start grabbing that soil and seeing when it is ready for planting. Feed your beds and perennials. Get ready for slug season in April...they will return no matter what you did last year. Spring planting is coming up. Enjoy the photos.

Pea trellis and mushies

2010-03-02T11:43:00.001-08:00

inky cap i think or maybe a simple LBM...do you know?

2010-03-02T11:22:00.001-08:00

March 1-Curriculum 1

Spring Sprung

2010-03-02T10:34:00.000-08:00

Well Spring has Sprung. I know I think fast but its here right? Daffodils around town are telling me that it is time to start planting. Cherry blossoms scent the air and bike rides offer thrilling smells, stunning colors, and views of people with big smiles. Spring temps are rising and the soil temps with them. I have been touring around Oregon taking soil temperatures and have found them to vary greatly from location to location. The average afternoon temperature that I have calculated around noon is about 50 degrees F. Not bad...and if I were in the business of making money from growing food I would be putting my seeds in ASAP hoping to get a head start on my local farmers. Since I am in the business of garden education and farm to school programming, I am waiting for another week before planting. I use my little home garden as a test plot for germ rates. It doesn't get a lot of hot full sun until summer so it stays a bit cooler during the day. I have noticed my first pea sprout, some poppies about 2 inches tall, and big columbines from last year growing up strong. I spent some time at the centers doing some curriculum development. In the posts that follow, you can find a whole lot of whats going on in our centers. I will be posting the curriculum that I am doing at the gardens each week. You can upload the curriculum** from my site and use it with your own projects. The curriculum is already free and on the internet. We will be using the children's experiences with the garden and the curriculum on the web as a way to connect you to our centers and our centers to each other. The curriculum below is about defining living/non-living things. I am not following the rock boiling thing at all...just talking with the kids about safe ways of observing things while in my class. We will be making some special goggles for them out of toilet paper rolls and they will be able to observe living and non living things in the classrroom and outdoors. This will be a good time to get the rules of garden education across to the children. I have also printed out tons of pictures of living and non living things. We will use the pictures during the first part of class each week until we get them down. If you need further info write me a question here or email me at ocdcgardens@gmail.com. I also included a pic of the mushrooms growing in our gardens. Mushrooms are a GREAT sign of fertility and health in a garden. I believe that these are either LBM's or maybe inky caps. Not sure but they look great. The last pic is of our pea trellis. Check back for some more photos and updates next week. We will be planting peas, radish, spinach, salad, beets, and greens next week. (**curriculum sourced from cfaitc.org)

Spring is approaching WHOO-PEA!

2010-02-01T15:47:00.001-08:00

Silverton had more work done this weekend. Mark, Farmer Bob, Julian and Dennis worked hard removing sod from a 200 square foot plot. Of course we only used man power...not gasoline tools. Sure it takes longer, but there is a different intentionality about using what you are made of...plants do it so we can too right? I think the plants respond well to that kind of care.
We discovered something very interesting on our corn plot. As we were breaking sod, we noticed that one half of the plot was dark red clay, similar soil to those farms and wineries in the Northern Valleys and foothills. The other half of the garden was a darker, siltier soil. It was difficult to photograph the difference because we had low light levels, but I have included a picture. As opposed to moving the garden plot to ensure an even growth rate; we are leaving the plot as is and creating a learning experience out of it. We will make some predictions and hypotheses about how the plots will grow and take notes/observations on each half of the garden. Hopefully we will be able to see the difference in the growth, color, size, and weight of the corn as it matures. What a learning experience for the kids.
We are looking to change up our blog set up too. We might move locations to a new blog server to provide more access and information for the centers. We are also planning on incorporating the children in the blogging experience by writing letters, drawing pictures, recording their observations etc. As we learn, plant and grow the children will record how they are processing this information. The kids will become their own resource as we connect center to center, garden activity to garden activity, and results and observations together on one web page. We will be placing our planting calendar on the blog as well as all the activities and lessons we are working on. You can come here to find curriculum ideas, monthly planting guides, and check out what is going on at our centers.
Spring planting is just a few weeks away. WHOOPEA for peas! The kids will be planting some peas at the end of Feb. Come back for more info soon.

Guide to pics--Hard workers digging and breaking backs. Bad bug in hand...do you know which kind? The soil on the right of the screen near the pink flag is red clay. The soil to the right is darker/richer silt clay.

Seeds, Sprouts and Blossom Dreams

2010-01-14T09:54:00.000-08:00

What a day. Wonderful partly cloudy skies here in Silverton. Yesterday it wasn't the case. Volunteers helped construct our second raised bed garden at Silverton. The rain was coming in sideways but the crew was chipper. We had a coffee break to warm up and made some more plans for our garden. I am hoping to clear out a site for a thick maiz patch somewhere but need to wait for the weather to let up. It is not a good idea to work soil in the winter in general but especially not when its is soggy and saturated. Soil might not always seem like a fragile thing but imagine that you are holding a mini ecosystem. When you work the soil while it is saturated (especially the clay soil of the willamette) they form impenetrable clods of clay, dirt, and detritus. These clods dry out easily and suffocate young and delicate seedling roots. The best practice when preparing soil for planting is to be patient and grab the soil with your hands on a daily basis. Try to form a ball simply by squeezing soil in your palm. If it feels like clay and forms like playdough put it back down, grab some coffee, and dream some more about how your garden will grow. If when you are forming the soil feels dry and breaks when trying to form a ball, drop it and do a rain dance because you just need a bit more water for perfect soil prep. If when you grab the soil it feels like a sponge when you squeeze it and holds a ball but resists clodding jump and dance because it is time to plant. Typically around here you can start planting early spring and summer crops like peas, radish, and some spinach later in February. You could certainly wait until March for peas but sometimes the weather has different ideas and knowing your soils structure and capacity will make your decision more intuitive to your own microclimate...a very important thing for green thumb development. So we need to wait for anything and let our gardens sleep. Completing the second garden was great so our compost and soil will have some time to settle out and cool down before planting. We received some great seed donations the past week. A huge package came in from High Mowing Seeds out of Vermont. Another big package came from Territorial Seed Company out of Cottage Grove. Al's Garden Center donated 12 4in plant starts. American Center for Sustainability is finalizing their plant list and will be donating up to 1000 plant starts for us this year. We are having a propogation party in March and hand planting 75,000 seeds! Phew...I am sweating just thinking about that. Outside the garden in my mind is in full bloom. I see peas and green climbing the sky. I already had to do some weeding in our beds because they are healthy and warmer than surrounding air making germination a pleasure. I can't wait to get growing. Come back to see more of OCDC's garden. Have any thoughts on fun projects to do with families in the garden? Fun activities for kids in the garden? Make a post and let us know your thoughts on how to immerse children and families in gardening and cultivation. We want to hear from you.

Holiday Wish List: One Hill of Steaming Horse Manure???

2010-01-04T14:02:00.000-08:00

Well it isn't what I would have put on my wishlist for the holidays, but any garden sure would enjoy some steamy horse poop. We give our gardens exactly what they need. Thanks to Carla and Mark from OCDC for all their hard work. What a day it was. The three of us trekked into Tualatin farm land searching for a stable owner who promised us a HILL of horse manure most of it composted. We got what we wanted. We headed to a miniature horse farm out of Tualatin (name omitted for privacy reasons) and found a stable of about 5o mini horses all of them so cute. On the walk to the horse pilings, they were neighing and swaying because they were just about to be fed. They were excited by us and us by them. Carla is familiar and comfortable around horses so she began petting them and talking to them too. There were a couple big doggies that were concerned with the outsider presence but more confused with why we were shoveling horse poo I am sure. Barking us along the path, the dogs were trying to herd us into the stable doors. The hill of poo itself was 50 square feet and about 20 feet high and eight years old easily the biggest oldest pile I have seen. It was steaming but not smelly at all...least not to me. I can't speak for the others. Mark Carla and I proceeded to take about 10 cart loads of this prized compost away and were encouraged to return for more "anytime you want". It was filled to the max with wriggling worms and cocoons. GOLD. Mark and I drove out the compost to the Silverton garden where we spread it around our garden areas and filled some in ground pots as well. Although it might be a little hot (the compost might be strong and burn the plants if it isn't composted enough) the compost spreading will keep these beds and in ground pots running great for several years eliminating the need for additional soil amendments. Most of the poop we selected was fully composted but there was a mix of ages in there. For now, it is nap time for the garden. It needs a break just like we just had. March we will start some plantings of peas, spinach, salads, and radish. We were generously given 100 seed packets from High Mowing Seeds out of Vermont. All organic seeds too! I am hoping to have some more seeds come from Territorial and some plant starts coming from the American Center for Sustainability in May. If planted in April and May, we should have a strong garden for summer and fall. Still looking for volunteers and hoping to get some work done soon. One more volunteer gained...Jen who worked as a firefighter out in Alaska the last few months will be assisting with some construction and maintenance out at Silverton and possibly Linden. Hoping to lead some organic gardening classes in the Spring so look here for when and where those will be. Like what you see here and want more? Have some questions about OCDC? Are you a parent, student, or volunteer that wants more info or involvement? Contact me at the central office extension 1087 and I will be happy to answer those questions for you. You can also contact me at ocdcgardens@gmail.com .

2009-12-18T11:15:00.000-08:00

WE GOT A GRANT!!

2009-12-16T09:39:00.000-08:00

Above you can see the pumpkin/sunflower plot lined up. The "GROUND POTS" are made by digging into existing soil and filling the new hole with rich compost and manure. The original soil is then mix in around the top to form small hills. Ground pots are great for anything that needs constant moisture, heat, and nutrients so does well with squash, pumpkin, tomatoes, and peppers.

Oh yes we did. We just got a grant today. Thank you to SOLV and their Project Oregon grant. SOLV is sponsoring our conversion of the Silverton Plot into the children's learning and nutritional garden. We will be removing Himalayan Blackberry (an invasive species here) and all the litter from our site. The ground is soft now and most of the blackberry just needs to be root balled. Basically, Blackberry spreads into thick mats of spiny madness...imagine the scene at the end of snow white with the dragon and the brambles. Blackberry spreads by seed and by root. We have to dig up the root and sever the central "ball". We have approximately 50 to remove from our site. They have been clipped and look pretty bad already so I think we are on the way to a blackberry free garden. We have a litter problem that I have sourced to our Neighbors and their parking lot. Loads of litter blow in and are trapped along the fence line. To help keep Oregon clean and respect our site, we are going to be removing all of the trash. Most of it can be collected along the fence line. Feel free to pick up trash as you see it. The garden will appreciate it. After our major clean up, I hope to share the pictures of all the trash and the garden as it stands to our neighbors. Thanks to SOLV, our neighbors, and all our volunteers. Dates to be announced soon about the volunteer clean up day. Look here for more information.

Things to think about: Right now it is time to start thinking about your spring and summer garden plan. All the seed companies are packaging that 2010 seed and around here if you don't jump on ordering early, you won't get those prized NW producers. What will you be planting? Where will you source you seeds from? Where will everything grow? When and where will you start your seeds for transplant? We have a plan to grow most of our crop by direct seeding. This is what is important for the kids, getting them directly involved with the cultivation of food. The kids will be out planting and monitoring their seeds in early spring. We have some deer problems so we are entertaining some funky kid creations and other green techniques to keep em off our seedlings. Any one have any ideas? The children will also be participating in transplant care. Some of the plants we will grow will have a higher success rate if we grow them into healthy plants before planting them in the ground...tomatoes, peppers etc. The kids will help grow these indoors and harden them off outdoors before transplanting.

15 degrees?? Whats going on inside our gardens.

2009-12-09T09:39:00.000-08:00

ABOVE--A shot of the garden at Linden with some cardboard poking up from below the surface. Cardboard is used instead of straw here to test the benefits of sheet mulching in raised beds.
Phew..it hurts a bit to walk outside because of the cold. I can't believe I ever managed western NY winters for college...we had -17 degrees with wind chill. I hope you all have warm places to be today. I just turned my heat on this week!
With all this cold weather, you must be thinking...what the heck happens to the ground when the cold weather gets here. Without solid snow protecting the soil from the elements of winter, we have to pay particular attention to how we maintain our soils. Soils are a stratified living system of organic and inorganic materials that interact with each other. Soil is living and breathing everyday. It is important to let our soil do its thing and not over till it. OVER TILL IS OVER KILL. This disrupts natural cycles for the organisms and bugs and could create a not so healthy living environment.
For our gardens...we have used a technique called sheet mulching to winterize it. Check out sheet mulching here http://extension.oregonstate.edu/lane/sites/default/files/documents/Lasagna.pdf. Basically we are using straw and compost as soil activators and protectors. The straw protects from constant rain and leaching of soil nutrients. It also keeps the soil warm like a blanket and breaks down into a fine material great for early seed sprouting. The compost we use is all organic and from the willamette valley. Among manures, fruit and veggie compost, and forest products it contains good bugs, bacteria, and fungi that create good soil health. We have created a great living environment where the animals and plants can relax and vacation until the heat of spring gets em back to work. Spring planting is only 8 weeks away!!

Here is an article from Oregon State University about it.

What happens when soils are long-soaked?

Rain, rain and more rain. Will prolonged, saturated soils hurt your landscape plants?

"Well, yes, no, maybe," said Oregon State University soil scientist Herb Huddleston. "It depends on how long the soil in the root zone stays saturated, how deeply rooted the plants are, how sensitive they are to temporary saturation."

In general, if the upper foot of soil is saturated for no more than a few days at a time, there will be little or no damage to most plants, explained Huddleston, who studies wetland soils in OSU's Department of Crop and Soil Science.

When soil is as saturated as it is on the west side of the Cascades in the winter, Huddleston said there can be two major effects to your garden.

"In the short run, water-filled soil pores shut off the oxygen supply to plant roots and the microflora and fauna that live in the soil," said Huddleston. "In technical terms, we say the soil becomes 'anaerobic.' This doesn't happen immediately. After a few days, however, we can assume that most of the oxygen is gone, and as long as the soil stays saturated, it is replaced very, very slowly by diffusion from the air above the soil. Then plants that need lots of oxygen for root respiration are going to feel the stress, and eventually will die and begin to rot in the soil."

The second major effect of saturated conditions in soil is both chemical and biological.

"When the soil becomes anaerobic, those microorganisms that need oxygen to live begin to die off, and the anaerobic microflora take over," he said. "Anaerobic processes of decomposition are less efficient, however, so organic carbon levels tend to accumulate in soils that are often wet for long periods of time. That's why wet soils often have blacker colors to greater depths than in better drained soils."

What can a home gardener do to minimize the adverse effects of chronically saturated soils?

- Keep your garden soil well supplied with organic matter, which maximizes both the total porosity and the ability of water to flow through the soil, said Huddleston. Organic material promotes the development and maintenance of good soil structure, which helps the soil to drain readily under natural conditions after the rain stops. -Provide some sort of surface drainage with shallow ditches if your garden area has a natural slope. "But if your soil is on a broad, level terrace and contains naturally restrictive clay layers, or is in a slightly concave, depressional area, about all you can do is wait for it to quit raining and the sun to come out," said Huddleston. - Plant landscape plants that tolerate wet conditions in the wetter places on your property. Don't plant things that need really good drainage in spots that tend to have standing water in the winter. "Douglas fir is particularly sensitive to wet soil conditions, whereas Ponderosa pine is much more tolerant. Some plants actually thrive in wet soil conditions, and they often have special mechanisms to provide oxygen to their roots during the time the soil is saturated. Oregon ash is such a plant, as are the multitude of sedges and rushes that occupy true wetlands." - Plant wet-intolerant species in berms, raised beds or planters. For instance, fruit trees don't like "wet feet." If you must plant them in a wet area, plant them in a bed of soil piled above the winter-saturated zone. Build the beds higher than you think they need to be; they will settle. - Use structures and ground covers to prevent erosion from rainfall. Railroad ties, stone walls, and ground covers such as green manures or ivy all help slow runoff and topsoil loss.

By: Carol Savonen
Source: Herb Huddleston

BRRRR....still working.

2009-12-04T10:47:00.000-08:00

Thanks to everyone who helped this week. Linden garden was completed and winterized. It looks really great. Silverton got a new garden this week. Volunteers helped install the boards, dig up the plot, and prepare our pumpkin patch. What a help they were. Our plan is to heavily plant the hillside at Silverton to create a nice big pumpkin patch. Hopefully, the pumpkins can be used not only by Silverton students and families, but shared among the community. I imagine even having a pumpkin patch sale or give away. It would bring the community in and might sponsor some more progress.
The kids got messy finally. They used their hands to till and turn our soil. They helped to winterize the garden by applying compost and straw to the beds. I wanted to explain more about the process but I could tell they were cold. More events to come in the future. Its only winter and I can't wait for spring.

HELP: I need some seeds and plants. This is a call for donations and networking. We need to find some supplies for our gardens. I am hoping to plant lots of peas, spinach, and radishes come February. Our gardens will be sleeping until then for the most part. Contact me at extension 1087 or by email jeremy.katz@ocdc.net...lets collaborate.

Linden Garden Almost Complete

2009-11-23T11:10:00.000-08:00

Linden had some garden installation last week. Things are looking good over there although those darn bunny rabbits are going to make some trouble come Spring. The garden is 80 square feet and runs 4 feet wide and 20 feet long. The kids seemed to enjoy the new activity center. Thank you to everyone who helped make the installation such a success especially the facilities crew.

Volunteer times: Want to do some dirty work next week? Check the post for updates but it looks like Thursday and Friday might be some light work days. Filling some soil and covering with straw.

Enjoy the pics once they upload...the blogger has been slow recently.

Guru Katz

Garden Installation Completed at Silverton

2009-11-18T11:00:00.000-08:00

WHOOPPEEE!
Thanks to all the help from Mark and Silverton Center for making the garden installation such a success. Jeremy busted up 100sq feet of sod last week and filled up the gardens with rich soils. They are looking great but boy oh boy do I wish they were filled up with plants. We need to start training some volunteers who are willing to do some work for the whole year. Please sign up for some volunteer times if you are willing. I have included some photos too.

2009-10-30T11:17:00.000-07:00

Want to make a suggestion on what to grow in our gardens? Post a comment here. Be sure to include your name, your plant suggestion, some guidelines for growing it, and why you think this would be a good fit for our program.

We would like to take this time to thank Naomi's Organic Farm Supply and Wilco for there generosity and assistance with this project. We would also like to thank the Portland Nursery, Sustainable Shift, Al's Garden center and the Oregon Garden for their patronage. Thanks to all the schools and garden programs as well that are too long to list here. We appreciate your help!

Garden Project Updates

2009-10-30T11:02:00.000-07:00

Hello

Glad you came to our blog. This serves as a place to connect, share stories, view pictures, ask questions and catch up on what is happening with the garden project.

Please feel free to make comments and posts. On the left margin there is an event listing calendar. It should help you to see whats is going on where and when and even allows you to confirm some time for volunteering.

OCDC is building sustainable raised bed vegetable gardens for the centers. The project is all about nutrition and education. It follows a similar methodology to other Farm to School programs in the area.

The centers just received their first set of materials for the garden building. Silverton and Linden are the first to get some work in them. On Monday we will start removing sod from the garden and lining the ground for the raised bed boards. Come join us for some dirty work!

OCDC Garden Blog Start Up

2009-10-30T10:36:00.000-07:00

Welcome to the Oregon Child Development Coalition Garden Blog.

We are the Oregon Child Development Coalition!
As one of the largest early childhood care and education networks in Oregon, we are dedicated to improving the lives of children and families through dynamic leadership, advocacy, and unique and essential services that embrace education as the catalyst in this process.
We carry out our mission by:
PREPARING children for school
PRPROMOTING economic opportunities
PARTNERING and collaborating
PRACTICING inclusiveness
Cultivating our children’s future is a collective responsibility. As such, we take seriously our role as a leader in this process and envision our agency as a model of excellence in early childhood care and education.

visit our site at www.ocdc.net to find out more