Seeding Pics

Look at these sprouts planting seeds!

Spring Seeding before Spring Break

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

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.

March 8 Curriculum 2

pix

March Outdoors and Know your soil

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

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

March 1-Curriculum 1

Spring Sprung

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)