Garden Reflections for May 15th, 2008

Group A
“Today Garden Group A planted and found things. What we found were little mini oak trees! …We also transplanted collards. We ate some, which I personally did not like. [A friend and I] had to carry 20 pound soil buckets. They were heavy. The also were at least 2 feet tall by my estimate.”

“When I went out to the garden I planted some [collards] and spinach. I thought it was pretty fun. I liked digging up the soil. The kale we tasted in the garden was good but sour…I learned that you need to be extremely careful planting plants.”

“Do you like plants? Well I do. I love planting… Plants are useful in this world and that is why I love planting. You also must be very delicate and gentle or you will hurt the plant. It is also good to remember to grab it by the leaf...”

“In garden group A we planted collards. I learned you have to plant them 1 foot or 12 inches apart. I also learned that when you take the plants out of six packs, if the soil inside the roots has two or more plants in one you have to squeeze gently to pull them apart. I thought it was fun lining up the ruler to make the holes so we could dig later in the group time. We added a lot of compost because the soil was all rocky and other stuff had been planted there before the collards so it didn’t have a lot of nutrients left…”

Group B
“Today in garden group we worked with our greens garden. First we thinned out the garden. This means that you remove some of the pants to make room for other plants to grow...”

“Today in garden groups I went outside and took plastic containers and began picking a certain kind of kale from a raised bed and putting it into a container. We did that for a while until we had filled a container with each kind of [green]. [My friend went to get a salad spinner] and my other friends and I played tag with Ms. Hartz. Three minutes later my friend came back [with the salad spinner] and we washed and dried the [greens]. Then we got a piece of rhubarb and went to band. It was fun. I learned how to use a salad spinner.”

“ How we picked the greens was by pinching the bottom of a plant and pulling them out. We picked mizuna, red kale, green mustard, tatsoi, etc… Then we gave the sixth graders a taste of each of the greens that we picked. We did the same for the Librarian, the Principal and the Nurse… I learned that with your greens you have to pick some roots out and make space for other roots to sprout and and grow, otherwise they will grow slowly…

“…I liked everything but thinning the greens. It was really dirty, slimy and really wet. The greens were really good, especially the kind of green called mizuna. I learned that if you want to have a garden that has a lot of room so that roots have some room to grow then you need to thin the plants so they can grow big and strong instead of getting squished and crowded.”

Group C
Today in garden groups I transplanted. It was fun. My favorite thing was shoveling the compost…”

Group D
“Today in my garden group we were planting kale. It was fun. We were digging deep holes. We made 12 deep holes… It was a fun garden group today.”

“Today in a garden group at Green Street School I prepared for planting kale. We had to search everywhere in the garden to find a good spot and we have a little spot near the rhubarb plant. Next we had to take out the sticks and leaves and we twisted up the soil. Then we added compost and topsoil. Next we dug holes and added the kale plants. Before we dug holes we mixed up the soil, topsoil and compost. Lastly I picked some rhubarb and ate the stem because the leaf is poisonous."

“We tried and tried but we couldn’t find what we were looking for which was the kale sign. We even got [my friend] to climb in the shed,,, but we still couldn’t find it…“”
Group G
“Today I went to a river called the West River. My group picked some pretty rocks for our new herb garden we are making at school. I thought today at the West River was very cool because of all the rocks there that had different colors and different shapes. Today I learned that there is this beetle that crawls under the rocks. But the beetles are a really dark green and they are pretty small… My favorite kind of rock is the dotted ones.”