Making spinach smoothies on the last day at OPK

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!

Making smoothies at Cornelius





Making smoothies at Jose Pedro

Exploring the Jose Pedro garden

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

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

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

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!!!

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!