Party!

What a great season it has been!  We are so fortunate to have such enthusiastic children and parents in Garden group. Thank you everyone for making this a truly fun experience.

Our last session of the season ended with a whirl of activity that matched the storm clouds and wind that kept threatening to disrupt our party.  Cyndi Aubrey did a wonderful job organizing the party.  She brought clay pots for the kids to pot up plants in and a bunch of helium balloons that were tied to the entrance of the garden.  Parents provided yummy treats and Michele brought in flats of plants from Harlequin Gardens and 6,000 lady bugs for everyone to release in the Heatherwood garden and the new Peace garden at the front of the school.  Michele designed the Peace Garden in honor of Nicole Clark, a 4th grade student who tragically passed away earlier this year.

Shortly after Bjorn painted the hoop house for us, the kids were busy decorating it with Sharpies.
Part of the appeal of Garden Group may be that the kids get to do things that they are normally told NOT to do at school:  draw on walls, release bugs, handle power tools, scream and run underneath a sprinkler, dig in the dirt and pick out worms and other buried 'treasure'.  Of course we do have rules for safety and courtesy to others, but we are also thankful for the garden space and large lawn area surrounding it.

Special thanks to Theresa for being at almost every garden class and taking wonderful photos of the kids.  Many of the photos in this blog were taken by her.

Over the summer, Michele will be holding Monday working nights in the garden from 6 to 7 p.m.  Everyone is welcome to participate.  I have started a signup sheet so that Michele has an idea of who to expect or who to call in case she can't be there. If you do not see it in your email, please let me know.

Finally, I would like share some of Heather William's vegetable recipes to give your summer a tasty start.  After all, isn't this ultimately about eating well?  Enjoy!

GARLICKY KALE

Prep 20 min; Cook 25 min; Serves 8

1/4 c. water or low-sodium chicken broth

2 (1-lb.) bags fresh cut-up kale [Or one big bunch of fresh kale, cleaned and chopped]

3 garlic cloves, cut into thin slivers [Or chopped garlic from a jar]

1/4 tsp. red pepper flakes

2 tsp. extra-virgin olive oil

1/2 tsp. salt

1.) Heat a Dutch oven over medium-high heat until hot, about 3 min. Add the water/broth. Add the kale in batches, stirring constantly just until each batch is wilted, about 4 min. per batch. [Recipe unclear; I took each wilted batch out before adding a new one. Not sure if nec.] Reduce the heat and stir in garlic and red pepper flakes; cover and cook until the kale is tender, about 6 min.

2.) Drain the kale in a colander; return to Dutch oven. Stir in the oil and salt. Serve hot!

ROAST BEETS

beets

olive oil

fresh rosemary

salt and pepper

Preheat oven to 450º. Scrub beets well, cut off stems and tail, cut into quarters and coat lightly with olive oil. Place prepared beets in foil-lined pan. Sprinkle liberally with salt and pepper.  Tuck rosemary segments in among the beets. Roast in oven for 30 minutes or until tender when pierced with a fork. Intense flavor!

ORANGE GINGER BEETS

Roast beets. Place diced beets in saucepan or small skillet with a little butter, orange juice, honey, pinch of salt and grated fresh ginger.  Over medium heat, simmer until thickened and syrupy. Remove from heat, cover, and set aside.

To serve with wilted greens, heat olive oil in wok-type skillet and toss in washed and drained greens and splash of water. Toss until barely wilted. Dress with a little champagne vinegar or rice vinegar, and sprinkle with sliced almonds.

Also great as a pizza topping with blue cheese crumbles and toasted walnuts.

Heather Stratton Williams

Planting Tomatoes. Photo: Theresa Diaz

May 9th and 16th,

During our May 9th Garden Group, we planted tomatoes in the hoop house.  These were from seeds that were started indoors under fluorescent lights and subsequently transplanted to larger containers and hardened off by Michele at her home.  The hoop house will hopefully extend the growing season well into the fall.

The trellises that we made earlier were positioned over a bed that contained peas and tied to stakes to prevent them from blowing over.

For our May 16th Garden Group, thanks to Bjorn's generosity, we planted more tomato plants and other plants he donated from his garden.  Bjorn, a professional painter, has also offered to paint the hoop house sometime during the next week (provided that it stops raining!)  so that Garden Group will be able to paint flowers on it during our party next week!  Thanks Bjorn!

Garden Group spent most of the meeting pulling out weeds and generally cleaning up the front flower beds on either side of the sidewalk leading into the school.  Not an easy job with all the tough weeds growing in the beds.  A big thank you to parent volunteers Theresa and Andrea!

We also harvested our lettuces.  It was really great to see the kids grab bunches of the freshly picked and washed lettuces and eat it happily.  Hopefully we'll see more of that at the dinner table.

I gave a short talk about good and bad insects in the garden, as a precursor to our ladybug release on the last day of Garden Group.  Although lady bug larvae don't look anything like their cute adult counterpart, they have a much more voracious appetite for aphids than the adults. Kind of like teenagers.  I also relied heavily on Shimon Steinberg's fascinating TED lecture, http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/shimon_steinberg_natural_pest_control_using_bugs.html
to show how parasitic wasps lay their eggs inside aphids to use them as a source of food for the developing larvae.  Gross, but ingenious.  I will give a bug talk to Mrs. Lockhart's 2nd grade class this Friday. Thankfully this will be it with bugs for awhile as all the close ups of centipedes, millipedes and mummified aphids that I have been printing out on my computer is giving me the creeps.

Biological control of pests using insects is great but since we all don't have access to a ready supply of predatory mites, parasitic wasps and lady bugs, another pesticide free alternative is to use home remedies.

Here are some that I found in the magazine Fine Gardening (July/August 2005).

Home Remedies for removing Insect Pests        

Tricks for removing aphids, mites and other small insects;

1. Dislodge with a blast of water (Scientist at Texas A&M Univ. estimate that up to 90% of these insects can be removed this way!)
2. Adhesive tape

For aphids:

Fill a yellow dish with soapy water near the plant.

Aphids are attracted to the color yellow.

For Spider mites:

Combine ¼ cup of buttermilk with 2 cups of wheat flour in 2 ½ gallons of water.

    Mix thoroughly and put in a spray bottle and spray on plants.  This mixture suffocates the  mites.

To protect plants in the cabbage family (broccoli, cauliflower, kale etc.)

Mix 2 Tbsp of red-pepper powder and 6 drops of liquid soap in 1 gallon of water.

Let the mixture sit overnight, and stir well.  Put in a spray bottle and spray weekly on the tops and bottoms of leaves.


Enjoy!

Mother's Day

May 2nd
Luckily for Garden Group, flowers and Mother's Day go hand in hand.  For our Mother's Day craft, Shira Graf showed the kids how to make pretty flowers by fan folding tissue paper and 'puffing them up' after fastening the middle with a green pipe cleaner.  The flowers ranged from big open poppies to multilayered compact tulip like creations.

Using papers embedded with wildflower seeds from a local Boulder company called bloomin (bloomingpromotions.com), the kids made Mother's Day cards.  The older kids didn't have time to make their cards, so be sure to prod them about 'the garden card' so you can plant a little wildflower pot this Mother's Day.  Thank you to Shira for organizing the supplies for this craft and for Cyndi Aubrey for bringing juice boxes, popcorn and extra supplies!

Important directions I forgot to include with the card:
1. Dig a small hole in your garden or pot.
2. Place the flower in the hole, cover with soil.
3. Water occasionally and enjoy the flowers!

Michele, Theresa and Milen showed the kids how to plant potatoes.  They planted purple potatoes in pots which we will keep adding dirt to and monitoring over the summer.  It'll be fun to see the purple slices in a garden salad in the fall.

Top photo: Seeding potatoes ready to go.
Bottom photo: Kids add dirt to containers.
Photos: Theresa Diaz

Thanks to the help of parent volunteers Bjorn, Jasmine, Theresa, Bill Brown and Art teacher David River's help, last week we were able to get rid of most of the weeds that were growing in the Hoop house and to build borders for our planting beds.  The structure of the hoop house is now complete and just awaits painting.  Since the weather is warming up, the full utility of the hoop house won't be apparent until we use it in the fall. Not that it isn't useful now as a cute house for the kids to play in!