Fun-Filled Garden Teacher Training at Fairview Elementary

Fairview Elementary School new staff participated in a fun filled garden teacher training conducted by Melissa FoodCorps Tinling .

 The brand new staff found out how much fun they can have in the garden as they get ready to use the outdoor learning center with their students this year! 

— at Fairview Elementary School. High Point, NC

Open House kickoff highlights School Garden support

at Irving Park Elementary

 As with many of our schools with gardens, parent volunteers play a key role in supporting teachers in their use of these outdoor learning centers. Heather Fullagar, Dana Davis, and Kevin Reddy are just a few of the many parents atIrving Park Elementary (IPE) volunteering to support the garden.

Every teacher has a garden bed with signage. Parents and teachers signed up 

to care for the garden for a week at a time over the summer.

As a result, we saw beans, okra, sweet potato, tomatoes, strawberry, 

peppers, cantaloupe, watermelon and pumpkin!

Students and teachers are excited to come back to these yummy fruits and veggies! Teachers are already talking about what they want to grow in their

garden beds this fall. 

GCCE School Garden Network will hold gardening

workshops at IPE in October for interested teachers and parents.

 Let us know if you would like to participate!

Brooks Global organizes to revive their School Garden!

Right now we have some mustard green and some yellow snow peas (for snacking, not enough for cooking just yet) that’s ready for picking. Perhaps we will have some green squash and grape tomatoes which might be ready in the next month or so. Other squash might take a longer time. I’m assuming the radishes that Mrs. Langer’s class planted will be ready soon as well.  Whoever signed up to take care of the garden can pick anything that’s ready, not much for now, hopefully we’ll have more in the future.Parent Sharon Guerraro offers an abundance of Thai Basil, Lemon Palm, Chocolate Mint and Papaya plants if anyone is interested for the garden.

 Parents and the School Garden Network unload compost for gardening beds. Linda Kidd, principal at Brooks Global is highly supportive of the garden plans in addition to parents and teachers. Cynthia Nielsen, SGN coordinator spoke to the staff at their final meeting before the summer break.

Thanks from Brooks Global parents to  Mrs. Langer, Kindergarten teacher getting the Garden Committee started. I am excited that Brooks will have a most wonderful School Garden for all teachers and students to enjoy teaching and learning!

Jones Elementary Garden Update: Bumper Spring Crops!

Hi Everyone!

I just wanted to let you know what has been happening in the garden this spring and what our summer plans are. Do you remember last August when we came back to this?

 We have turned it around to a workable, productive school garden!

We have had a very bountiful spring in the garden. We have had a lot of produce go home to Jones families, bags and bags of lettuce, spinach, cabbage, swiss chard and broccoli. Teachers have also been the grateful recipients of spinach, peas, swiss chard and cabbage. Three classes have come out to sample snow peas and sugar snap peas they picked from the vine. At least two classes have snacked on what they raided from the strawberry patch.

There are lots of red potatoes curing in my crawl space right now that Sra. Soto's class grew. Sra. Ospina's class will harvest more red potatoes this week. We still have carrots in the ground, trying to give them every opportunity to grow, but they will be pulled before the end of the school year. Oh, and I almost forgot to mention the 30 heads of garlic that just finished curing in Marcia Jones' game room. Wow! Thank you all so much for all your help to make this a great year in the garden. We had eleven classes come out and get their hands good and dirty in the garden this spring. All the kids LOVE being in the garden and it is so awesome that we facilitate that. 

As the produce has been harvested, I have been turning the beds over to summer vegetables. So far, volunteers and I have planted cantaloupe, melon, red, yellow and green peppers, sunflowers, corn, red tomatoes, summer squash, butternut squash, grape tomatoes, yellow pear tomatoes and cucumbers. We have just two beds left to plant and our garden will be ready for the summer!

I have put together a summer gardening schedule that is almost full, but there is room if you want to help us out this summer. Basically, you would be responsible for weeding, watering and harvesting the produce from all the beds for one week. I think it would take someone maybe 3 or 4 hours that week. I would be available by phone and e-mail for questions, and if I am in town (which I mostly am) I can meet you in the garden if you need another pair of eyes and hands. The garden really does require care over the summer. Otherwise it is a disaster to return to in the fall. Please help us out if you can. 

I am excited that Melissa Tarleton will be co-chairing this team next year. Melissa has a lot of gardening experience and is a great asset to us. 

Please talk up the garden to all your Jones friends. We have a great team, but we can always use more help. Several of you know from personal experience that you really don't have to have any gardening experience to be successful in the garden. There are lots of folks who can help every step of the way and lots of people are checking in on the plants to make sure they are all being tended to. Please help spread the word that our garden is a real gem in the Jones community. Let's keep this great thing going!

Last but not least, a request for help. I could use some help with weeding this week. If you can stop by, the strawberry patch needs to be weeded, as does the cucumber rows in bed 10. You do not have to weed the potatoes in bed 10 as they are coming out this week. I have a great weeding tool in the bin. It is from Ace Hardware and looks like a metal forked tongue. Jane Forbes Fields turned me on to it and it is a great tool. Just dig it under the weeds and they come up roots and all very easily. 

Please let me know if you have any questions. Thanks again for all your help!

Jennifer Jacobs, Jones School Garden Coordintaor

The School Garden Tour at Irving Park Elementary May 4th, Sunday Afternoon

Lovely weather contributed to a big turn-out Sunday afternoon for the special 90^th anniversary celebration and school garden tour at Irving Park Elementary (IPE). In addition to cupcakes and lemonade, the afternoon was made even more delicious by Whole Foods Market Friendly Center’s fruit and veggie 

platters.

It wasn’t just adults enjoying the healthy snacks. Young people, familiar through their school garden and Chef’s Move to School tastings at IPE, made big inroads into the platters!

Students shared their garden beds, filled with plants now thriving in the warm weather, with their parents. Teachers attended also. Through workshops and lots of support from parent volunteers, they are enjoying using the gardens as outdoor learning centers more over time.

Below on the right is kindergarten teacher Ms. Hopkins (polka dots), who is very keen on gardening with her students. She says that it is one of her favorite ways to teach.

Superintendent Mo Green also toured the garden Sunday afternoon. IPE and Cone Elementary created a service leaning project called Seed Pals with their kindergarten and 1^st grade students this spring.

 Other interested teachers at schools with gardens are considering this model for their fall gardens.

Want to view another school garden?

 Jones Elementary hosts it Spring Fling this Friday May 9th with a garden tour start ing at 6pm until dusk!

Jefferson Elementary creates a new School Garden and a new Garden Club!

The Jefferson Garden Club, led by 5^th grade teachers Ellen Thore and Kirsten Joseph, sponsored a plant sale to raise money for their new gardens.

After raising $87 in plant sales, materials were purchased and three new gardens have been established at Jefferson Elementary School.

Gardens will be planted within the next two weeks and students hope to continue spreading plant wealth and knowledge within the community! 

Administrators are very supportive!

Jefferson’s Principal Cathy Batts says “I am so excited about this project!  Thank you for your hard work.  Wouldn’t you like to join forces with 4^th grade

next year???”

Donna Harper Asst Principal: This is absolutely wonderful!!  Thank you for making learning engaging and fun for the students!!

Cone Elementary and Irving Park Elementary 

form a garden partnership!

At a School Garden Network meeting in March, a parent from Irving Park El. and a teacher from Cone El. discovered that they had similar ideas about gardening with their students. They took it a step further, deciding how much fun it would be for their students to share their experiences with each other. A gardening sister school partnership was born!

Heather Fullagar from IPE and Meghan Dyson from Cone call their program Seed Pals.

It is a seedling and student written letter swap between 1st graders at the two schools.

First grade classes, at both schools, are raising seedlings and swapping letters. Our first grade will provide bok choy, rainbow swiss chard and daikon. They will receive cucumbers, squash,

okra and watermelon. Both schools will plant seedlings. Students’ second letter will

provide an update with a thank you. This works well as a service learning project!

First grade teachers Meredith Baity, Barrie Hornbuckle , Jodi Perlmutter, and IPE volunteer Heather Fullagar pictured below. Letters from students with drawings on the back. Cone 1st grade teachers will use this writing activity as one of their benchmark assignments.

 The second graders have planted potatoes. They will provide how-to letters to Cone’s 2nd graders. They will plant the received seedlings. A thank you letter with an update will follow.

Heather says “It is our hope that the letters will help our teachers expand their garden teaching. To incorporate math, they should include what date the seedling was planted, how many days to maturity and spacing when replanted. To incorporate art, the children could include drawings of what the seedling will become.”