Greenhouse space for school gardeners

Heather Sparks, Community Gardener Coordinator at Keeley Park wants to partner with interested School Garden teachers and parents. They have a greenhouse where you can grow seedlings during the winter to transfer to your school garden in the spring. Space is limited so contact her soon if you are interested!

heather.sparks@greensboro-nc.gov

4100 Keeley Rd.  McLeansville NC 27301

GCS High School Service-Learning Ambassador Training was held Saturday November 19th at Dudley High School

What a wonderful opportunity for groups like ours to network with junior and senior GCS High School students interested in service-learning! As Service Learning Ambassadors they will take the information back to share with their fellow students. We got to talk to 150 students as they rotated to our tables over a three hour period.

See below a list of High Schools whose representatives signed up with interest in doing service learning with our k-8 school gardens. We can send you contact info if you are interested in working with students from one of these schools.

Northwest HS   Northern Guilford HS       

STEM Early College@ NCA&T

Ragsdale HS             Dudley HS                 

Early College@Guilford College

Page HS                    Andrews HS                

Middle College@Bennett

Eastern Guilford HS  EMC@GTCC               

Middle College@UNCG  The Academy@Smith

**A special thank you to Yvonne Eason Coordinator, Character Development & Service-Learning and her team for sponsoring this GCS event!

Irving Park Elementary Create or Revive a School Garden

Our School Garden Workshop at Irving Park Elementary October 20th was a lot of fun and very informative. Sarah Crawford from Caldcleugh Multicultural Arts Center shared her strategies for teaching in the garden.

Karen Neill, Director of Coop Extension, Quina Weber-Shirk, and Noah McDonald FoodCorps service members, also shared their experience and enthusiasm! Saydie Payne 4-H agent provided activities for the children. What a beautiful afternoon to learn about school gardens! 

Students at High School Ahead Academy Clean-up Herb Garden!

The campus is coming right along, new gardeners this year in the Middle School weeding our herbs that have done 

fantastic!!!! Thank you NC unit Herb Society!

 High School Ahead Academy!

Greensboro, NC

School Garden Workshop just for you!

Hampton Gardening Update
The gardening event on Saturday June 4 was a TERRIFIC success, as evidence in the attached photos:·         4 raised beds installed in new area to the west (notice – no sun in that area until about 9 AM, but I am thinking that we will get 6 hours starting around mid-day)·         3 new raised beds, including one creative triangle!, in the existing gardening area·         Cardboard under the beds should retard grass through the summer·         Soil in the new beds contains fertilizer; we will need to provide some supplemental nutrients for the other beds·         Plantings, current area: tomatoes, peppers, bush beans and sweet potatoes·         Plantings, new area: cucumbers, squash and one tomato

TO DO:Monday June 13 – clear the two beds of pansies and daffodils, save daffodil bulbs; add supplemental soil;  separate transplants that are too crowded and spread them into these beds.Monday July 18 (tentative) – interactive day with students as follow up to their reading assignments; need produce from farmers market to show what the vegetables will look like at time of harvest
Harvest – around August 4, we should have the first green beans, squash, cucumbers, and early tomatoes.Harvest of these plants should continue for 3 to 4 weeks, if they are cared for and harvested regularly
Sweet potatoes should be harvested right after Labor Day, and must be cured in a dark place for six weeks before eating.

Suggestions for the use of additional grant money – we need analytical instruments to measure soil temperature, moisture, pH AND weather station to measure rainfall and temperature.
It would be nice to have an outdoor classroom sitting area – perhaps benches on the opposite side of the walkway facing the gardens.

Family Garden Day at Cone Elementary

Sarah Crawford, school garden educator and Deb Caludsian, ESL teacher at Cone 

delivered a load of compost donated from White Street Landfill

 to blend with soil in the raised beds.

 School children attending the garden event enjoyed shoveling and filling beds. 

Sarah also demonstrated seedling thinning, watering and fertilizing.

Foodcorps service member Quina Weber-Shirk shared vermiculture activities 

which were very exciting and engaging for the children!

 

Master Gardener Jean Aller shared a presentation on container gardening which 

can be done with very little gardening space at home.

Sarah Crawford, garden educator, also demonstrated seedling 

thinning, watering and fertilizing.

Brooks Global students supplied the transplants used in the garden as part of 

their service learning project.

It takes a village of parents, teachers, students, and school garden volunteers to

 make for a lovely hands-on experience!

A Partnership that Makes School Gardens Grow

Trequan McGee cares about Agriculture and young people. He enjoys connecting both of these through service learning at some of our Guilford County schools with gardens.

 We connected with Trequan at NCA&T through Ms. Odile Hutchette’s   HORT 351- Practice in Sustainable Horticulture- class. It has a project with service-learning component. Here you see him with Ms Lubchenco’s 4^th grade class at Brooks Global Studies. They are learning about why to do square foot gardening.

Trequan is a great role model for these young students. He shares with them about his classes in horticulture and how he plans to get a graduate degree in plant breeding (and hopes to work his own small farm). He really enjoys answering their many questions.  Trequan will also work with 4^th and 5^th graders at Wiley El. and lead an activity at Jones Elementary’s family garden day Saturday March 30^th.

Thanks Tre!

*Trequan McGeePresident of Collegiate FFAPresident of Young Farmers and RanchersChairman of the DSACUndergraduate Representative for the SAES Advisory BoardUSDA Multicultural Scholar School of Agriculture and Environmental Sciences North Carolina A&T State University

Lindley Elementary Garden Workday today!

Saturday was a cold but beautifully clear blue sky day. Lindley Elementary parents, students, and teachers came out to make short work of the garden work so necessary to the success of a spring garden. 

One more reminder of the plant and nature cycles. Lessons these students learn first hand! 

Lindley is one of the oldest, most successful school gardens in Guilford County. We treasure it!

Planting Day at Brooks Global Studies!

The entire school got to participate at Brooks Global Studies

 planting day on Wednesday!

The sunshine felt so good after the cold snowy winter days!

We used flour to mark our rows to put our seeds. We planted spinach, kale, radish, lettuce and carrot for our early spring garden. We will add marigolds to protect our plants from insects.

We also prepared trays of seeds for our Service learning projects.

We planted peas, beans, radish, spinach, kale and lettuce to share with our sister Schools: Cone, Jones, Foust, Gillespie, and Hampton which also have school gardens.

We will share stories about how the plants grow in our gardens this spring!

We can’t wait to see all the seeds grow into yummy plants!

Installing low hoop season extenders at Brooks Global Studies!

Brooks Global Sustainability garden just got the structures for season extenders installed last weekend! 

 Every bed can be protected from the freezing temperatures with frost protection fabric.

Clear plastic covers will be applied during the day time when needed to provide a greenhouse effect.

Sandra Lubchenco, AG teacher and Stem Garden Sustainability project leader at Brooks Global and Cynthia Nielsen School Garden Network Coordinator smile after completing the installation.

Thanks to our helpers/ husbands Bill and Nick!

Cooking with Greens, local Chef Josh Kenny Feb. 9th

Seed Exchange a big success last night at Coop Extension!

Had a great time with the EMGVs (Master Gardeners), community and school gardeners at the Seed Exchange last night at Cooperative Extension. Spring is just around the corner! Cynthia Nelsen, Guilford County School Garden Network Coordinator.

McLeansville receives a $5,000 Lowes Toolbox grant!

It’s always impressive to see a school do what it takes to start and then extend a school garden: McLeansville Elementary is doing this. And now they have received a Lowes Toolbox Grant to extend their garden!

With help from an enthusiastic and energetic crew, McLeansville's school garden went up last spring and is getting ready to grow! Master Gardener Mentor Carol Spratley, played a great supporting role along with a crew of teachers headed by 3rd/4th grade teacher Jamie Lee. Principal Shervawn Sockwell lends her strong support to the school gardening project.

Cherry tomato transplants were provided by Odile Huchette and Alex Wofford in the Reid Greenhouse at NCA&T as part of the Urban Ag program. Carol and Jamie attended our workshop in February and used the square foot gardening approach.

The whole student body is getting involved, here they are making observations in their journals of the their very own garden. We look forward to updates from this wonderful school as they expand their growing space with their support from Lowe's for their spring garden!