Strawberries, peas, and seeds

Our strawberries are starting to produce red, ripe, tasty berries. Our sugar-snap peas are starting to produce, but always have such a hard time with this early heat. Students have been collecting the seeds of cabbage, and broccoli that was over-wintered and will be collecting the seeds of the Brussels Sprouts (at the corner of Cardenas and Brendan Ave.)

Check out the size of the onions and garlic in the canoe garden and in the raised beds! Can you tell which is which just by the foliage? The blueberry has already set fruit, as has the raspberry bush - yum!

Have you seen all the pollinators in the pollinator garden and all over the rest of the flowering plants? Keep your eye out for the Baltimore Checkerspot (our state butterfly) we have seen some out at North Point State Park, but not around the school.

I hope everyone is also enjoying the bounty that Real Food Farm brings by every Thursday for sale - sooooo many goodies!! Thanks RFF!

It'll be a BUGS week-end

This week-end the Green School will be supporting the BUGS program at Living Classrooms - its is a great plant sale and highlights their Utban gardening initiatives and student engagement. Put it on you calendar and go!

Prepped beds and plantings

The 5th grade has been working hard on Science Fridays preparing their beds for this years garden. The 5 raised-beds were rotated (the signs that is), and the soil had last years leaves, horse and chicken manure worked in.

Students planted some cool weather greens, carrots, beans and peas. They also planted some warm weather crops they had started - cantaloupe, peppers, and sweet basil.

The soil was teeming with earthworms and the soil was much less compacted with the new organics added in

Exciting blooms found at school

It was fantastic to return to surprise blooms this morning. The cabbage, mustard, and broccoli that was over-wintered has all set blooms. They are beautiful yellow flower clusters on the mustard and cabbage, and white on the broccoli.

Whats more is that the pollinators are loving it. A great array of bees and wasp and plenty of cabbage whites are around.

How cool is that?

Happy Spring Break

We hope everyone has enjoyed their spring break! It is so exciting to see all the colorful bulbs, shrubs and perennials showing off around the school and all of the pollinators hard at work. The sugar-snap peas are even showing their heads.

We will be planting some cool weather crops over the next few weeks (even as temps reach into the 80's for a spell) and doing some preparation of the raised-beds. It really is amazing how compact the soil has become in the raised-beds, even though they are never walked upon. It will some work to improve the soil structure, but we keep adding compost, carbons, and manure.

The canoe garden is doing well and the cabbage in some of the other containers could stand some harvesting. Our mason bees are working hard at the house, so we will be putting out the bee boxes at school this week.

The fun of over-wintering

One of the very fun, and very tangible benefits of over-wintering vegetables are being enjoyed by all right now. The canoe garden is full of onions and garlic, cabbage, swiss chard and other greens and the over-wintered pansies are in bloom and going crazy. The colors and blossoms and pollinator activity are such a welcome scene in late winter/early spring.

We have other containers that are a mix of landscape perennials, grasses, herbs, shrubs, pansies and edible greens like cabbage and swiss chard. The other enjoyable color that pollinators are enjoying are the daffodils and crocus and iris that are blooming all around the school.

We try to keep something in bloom outdoors year round and that is why we overwinter pansies. Spring bulbs offer an easy, low-maintenance way to achieve early spring blooms.

As I trimmed, and cleaned and mulched I also planted some sugar-snap peas in some of the containers which we should be eating in 55-65 days.

What, no snow?

So, no snow. We can see the soil in the canoe garden again - and much of the soil around the school. Most of the soil at-grade will be too wet to work for a while, but our container gardens offer opportunities for sugar-snap peas - can you tell I love them? Our onions, garlic, cabbage, and swiss chard seem to have survived the blizzards. Oh, how will this constant sogginess affect them?

So you may have read about our mice saga within our seeds we are starting indoors. Mrs. Primm was watering this morning and found 2, two, 1+1, 5-3 mice LOUNGING, full and content, in one of the containers. Well, she pounced, and pounced again, catching the mice within the container and released them far away from the building...

Our herbs are rockin' and we can start to transplant next week. My, how will Manga Monday enjoy fresh herbs from our new plantings again! Our teaching kitchen is thriving (going on three years of education and inspiration) and we love to be supplying fresh, whole foods again from our own urban farm.

I saw a flock of Robins yesterday - spring must be coming soon - start to look for those crocus!!!!