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