mini gardeners

Seedling Give Away

This weekend there's a seedling and gardening goodie give away at City Hall. To access info click on the picture below.

Very Productive Wednesday

This past week the kids made plant markers, drew pictures of what they are planning to grow in their gardens and planted bulbs. The seedlings from the last workshop are already sprouting and all of recent watering is bringing up NEW volunteer plants and weeds alike.
Our junior gardeners are all enthusiastic weeders (sometimes at the detriment of our plants) filling buckets with crab grass, spurge, lamb's quarters, and various undesirable green things. Unfortunately we also lost a volunteer artichoke and a couple of parsley plants to some over-ambitious little hands and feet. But that is the nature of learning about gardening. Very early in my gardening experience - I caught and destroyed many ugly little critters, only to discover (much) later that they were in fact juvenile ladybugs - UGH. But we all live and learn and I'm fairly certain that any future "accidental" artichokes that hit our garden will be treated much kinder.

End of the Year - Teddy Bear Picnic

We ended the school year with the Annandale Garden's First Annual Teddy Bear Picnic. The kids were invited to bring their favorite furry stuffed friend and shared healthy snacks in the garden. In celebration of a full school year of gardening, students were issued "Junior Master Gardener" pins.

New School Year and a Fresh Start

Before and After

At the end of the last school year, June 2009, our garden suffered an invasion of gophers. The little beasts destroyed a number of our flower beds in a remarkably short time and managed to turn our pretty little garden into hole-y mounds of dirt. After a brief battle with smoke bombs and employing streams of water to flood the gophers' homes, I gave up and left the garden to the gophers for the summer break and took the time off from gardening.
This week was my first week back to the garden and aside from the 3 foot tall weeds, was relieved to find that the troublesome critters had abandoned our garden for greener pastures.
The class and kids will be returning to the garden in the next week and we are all eager to begin planting.

wednesday = garden fun day!

Another great day in the garden with the first, kindergarden, and pre-school classes. There are snap peas, beans galore and flax + linnea + sweetpea blooms everywhere. Nothing makes a gardener happier than kids scrambling to eat peas off the vine!

room 4's jade plant cuttings

Mr. Lee's first grade class brought up their designed pots and started some jade plant cuttings. The kids will bring home the plants after they have rooted, just in time for Mother's Day.