Planting in space suits & garden overhaul

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.