Ida's winds

The late season tropical storm has stirred up winds around the Gulf of Mexico. Our garden seems strong. The delight of color on kale leaf and patterns of simple curves and points in the bean leaves. The Peace Patch is peaceful on Sunday afternoon. Green beans taste sweet as they snap in my mouth. Spinach, putting out delicious ripe leaves that crunch succulent between your teeth. Corn on the tassled crop in the three-sisters, cucumber a little drought weary and tomatoes overpowering their own space in the box assigned to their fruiting. So much attention to these plants has given them a sort of boastful richness, a bragging about life itself. Sweet potato vine snaking its way into the paths, pushing purple flowers and making orange tubers for our winter palette. Everything looks so well out there, even the new looming classroom cannot dampen our mood. We anticipate rains from the late season tropical storm Ida later this week. Today, her winds stirred leaves and pruned the underside of palm trees as I silently tended the garden.

An update!

First, the four of us doing the Independent Study (Sophia, Stephanie, Samantha, and Catharine) would like to say to the QFM students and volunteers that the garden looks great! Every time we go to the school there's something new, or the plants have gotten bigger!
As for us, we got our seeds in the ground a little later, so not as much is growing right now, but we do have some radishes popping up! Sophia's peas and beans are doing well, too! We have come a long way, however..
Before...


and now...


We've also been working with a combination 4th and 5th grade class at the school, and it's going well! We've done a few labs with them about germination, compost, and of course having them plant their seeds!
The results of our germination lab! ...

Radishes, Watermelon, Beans and oh my!

The garden today was teaming with frogs, radishes, plump beans, kale and two large watermelon. The sky didn't have a cloud in sight, just a crisp clear morning with due over the garden. We water the garden and watched the frogs wake up from a long nights sleep. There were plenty of juicy and yummy radishes to harvest. The beans are looking great and we harvested a few today, but they could use another week to reach their full potential.


The watermelon is looking great as well; two large watermelon are almost ready to harvest. I'm excited finally to get to taste the produce of the garden. There were no kids in the garden today, but with such a beautiful day it is hard to have a negative outlook.

For everything there is a season...

The fruit of our hard work certainly was evident today in the Edible Peace Patch Garden. Not only is everything thriving, but at least half of the plants are producing fruit, or at least have flowers, a sure sign that some delicious fruit or vegetable will be visible soon. It’s so wonderful to see the plants producing all of this food, growing without the need for any of those harmful chemicals we find in regular, store-bought produce. The best thing is seeing all the kids’ faces when they see the enormous watermelon and all the other stuff that has come up in the last week. They always have the most sincere form of wonder when they see everything growing, and we have been able to share with them a few of the vegetables that have come up, like the radishes that we harvested today.


We had first graders come out to the garden today, a very rambunctious group of exceptionally curious children. Our lesson was on soil, its benefits and the different types of soil we have in the garden. We showed them the soil in the beds, the sandy soil near the Three Sisters, as well as the compost and the horse manure. Not unexpectedly, the kids found the horse manure the most interesting, and apparently gross (a chorus of shouts of “eeeewww!” and “it’s stinky!” rang out as soon as we told them what manure was). The compost was a winner as well, and surprisingly many of the kids already knew what the compost was for, which meant that they were easily distracted from the lesson by the many bugs hiding in the compost. Luckily, the next lesson we have planned will be about the different types of bugs we have in the garden, the good ones and the bad, and how they affect the plants that are growing. Most of the kids are fascinated by the bugs, and a few of them already know quite a bit about them – one of my first graders today knew that the bees pollinated the plants. We will also be letting the children taste some of the stuff that we have in the garden, especially the radishes and the beans. Hopefully the watermelon will be ready soon so that we can crack one of them open and share with our classes.



Our herb garden is doing great as well – the amaranth, basil, and nasturtiums are all growing beautifully. The pineapple looks just as great as ever, though I think most of the frogs taking refuge in them have moved to different parts of the garden. I cannot wait for our end-of-semester event, so the kids, their parents, and the teachers can all enjoy the Edible Peace Patch as much as all of us do.

It's a Beautiful Morning in the Neighborhood

Today was another glorious day at the Edible Peace Patch Garden. It was a sunny one with a nice refreshing breeze to cool all of us down. Even though no children came out this morning, it was quite a productive day. We weeded and watered for a good portion of our shift in happy spirits. Who would not enjoy this service work? Anyways, now the garden looks more beautiful then ever with no weeds. It is nice to see that all of our hard work over the past couple of months is starting to pay off.

The vegetation in the garden is growing at unbelievable rates. It seems like every time a person blinks something else grows in the garden. The watermelons, for example, have grown incredibly fast. Not only have they grown fast, but they have grown fairly large too. Speaking of watermelons, there seems to be a problem with them. As of now, we are not sure what it is, but green spots cover some of the leaves of the watermelon. We think it is a parasitic bug of some sort, but we are not 100% sure. No worries though. The Edible Peace Patch Garden will come through with some sort of solution.

As I wrote above, our hard work is finally being rewarded. Some driver slowed by us this morning and looked at the garden. He remarked that it was “coming along beautifully guys.” That comment made me stand back a moment and actually enjoy the sight of our beautiful garden, which was just a pile of weeds a couple of months ago. It is nice to see progress that is actually tangible.

Let It Grow!

One zucchini hiding in the three sisters garden, two squash maturing next to the fence, and three gigantic watermelon hanging out in the peace patch! The brisk morning made the garden feel alive with energy. Every time we examine the watermelon plant a new melon is found and it's just as big if not bigger than the last.It seems as though everywhere you turn something amazing is happening; soon we'll be up to our ears in bush beans and radishes. The amaranth is taller than most preschoolers but I have a feeling that the sunflowers will shoot up soon enough as well. Last year some of them even towered over our heads. The yams are progressing nicely and following the watermelons example of how to escape beds; there is no evidence of fruiting yet but I have no doubt that by the end of the season we won't know what to do with all the delicious tubers.

We planted 6 zucchini seeds today since our first batch never produced any seedlings; hopefully this time they'll triumph. It's debatable but they were the most successful plant last season; even after school ended we were still handing out zucchini. The climate is still right for growing since we haven't hit below 65 yet! Our newly donated cherry tomato seedlings are a bit tiny to be transplanted but they look great nonetheless.

We didn't have any classes today but one of our preschools that normally come on Thursday stopped by for a visit. Aiden really enjoyed exploring the garden all by himself, he especially enjoyed observing the watermelon. It must be the sheer size and architecture of the plant that really attracts the kids. It could also be the constant flow of bees landing on and taking off of every blooming flower. We did have fun watering, weeding, and planting though; this vigor present in the act of gardening in the Edible Peace patch isn?t available through any other activity around.

The next month should bring a lot of dramatic changes in a very short period of time. Everything is already so big it's only a matter of time before the sugar snap peas and bush beans arrive followed by succulent spinach.

A Blast of New Growth!

It's been a while since I've been in the garden because of fall break, and wow is everything huge! The amaranth planted in the herb garden is nearly as tall as me and has a really thick stalk and purple flowers. The okra have already given us more of their fruit. The tomatoes are knee high and have flowered. the beans have little beans growing on them. The zucchini is humongous with baby zucchini on them. So much of it has changed and I feel like it was just yesterday that we had returned from the summer and had empty beds to fill. Now those empty beds are overflowing with green, delicious fruits of labor.

After our initial shock, we refreshed ourselves with what had been done last week and set to work. We fixed the shading tool for the aloe, weeded excessively (the weeds grew just as m

uch as the plants did!), made the trellis for the peas higher because they are growing taller and need something to climb, and harvested okra. We also watered and put a bag around a watermelon hanging off of its "playpen" so that it won't fall off while growing because of it's weight. Overall, it was a very productive and exciting day and I can't wait till everything is big enough to eat!

Children, what do you see? Dirt, dirt, dirt.

Today was a very hot day in the garden. The humidity was intense, but it is October in Florida.
The kids were still really happy to be out in the garden again. As they get to know us better they are becoming better listeners. They are like little sponges, soaking up all the information they can about the garden and about us.

We talked about dirt today, comparing the different kinds and what could grow in each. They enjoyed the hands-on part of it the most, feeling and smelling the different types of dirt to see how they were different. Even though some of them protested when we said we were going to touch it, they all had fun once we actually got there!

The garden itself is looking amazing. Everything is getting so big. The radishes have started poking their little red tops out of the dirt, signaling to us that they are ready to be picked. The beans, potato, gourd, pumpkin, cucumber and watermelon are all flowering and there are tons of pollinators around to help the plants through that process. There is a massive watermelon growing in the watermelon bed. We didn’t even notice it before and now it is huge. There are also a bunch of little watermelons that are bigger every time we visit the garden. The kids were really excited about them!

Taking care of the garden is such a wonderful experience. Helping the little plants (and children) along and seeing them grow makes all the humidity worth it!

Distance Makes The Heart Grow Fonder

Only one week away from the garden felt like several weeks of absence. It was a hot and humid morning, as it so often is in Florida, and as though it truthfully had been more than just a few days since our last visit, the garden is flourishing madly.The okra is enormous and is beginning to birth new baby okras. Several frogs were sighted sitting on the hand-shaped okra leaves, having taken refuge from the sun in their shade. The pea rows have begun to climb their constructed fences, from which the two newer gourds took as example and they too are beginning to climb their fence. In only a few days, the sunflowers are shooting right up and getting pretty tall. The peppers have produced petite purple flowers which can be spotted among their foliage. The three sisters are growing faster than one could even imagine: The corn is already giving seed, the squash (and lone, singular pumpkin) are huge and spreading outward, and the pole beans are already making an appearance. The aloe is greening up, although plans for a sun-barrier are being established to better suit their needs.The watermelon is doing awesome- with six or seven small nubs that will develop into giant green spheres of deliciousness. One of the watermelons is even bigger than my fist!

There were so many ripe and ready radishes that we just had to prune out some, harvesting several of them to make room for the others, even though they too are calling to be plucked from the earth and tossed into a salad.

We spent most of the morning weeding, as the weeds too grew wildly over the fall recess and have popped up in and around most of the garden beds. The compost, which was saturated well by yesterday's hard rain, was turned, and because most everything in the garden was moistened by the precipitation, no watering was really necessary. The water provided not only drink to the Peace Patch plants, but gave them a glittering luster, which made the garden appear even more glorious and welcoming of our return.
William Shakespeare once said, “Absence doth sharpen love, presence strengthens it; the one brings fuel, the other blows it till it burns clear." In other words, the garden love grows on! While everyone was away missing the garden and taking time to replenish and rejuvinate, the garden was preparing itself for our blissful return, waiting patiently to impress us with its beauty and welcome us back, thriving in its thriving excellence and reinforcing just how much we love the place we've created, and the bonds we've established within it.

Quiet morning on the Garden Front

This morning was a peaceful one with a slight breeze and nice chill in the air. We weeded as usual on a Friday morning as most of the good stuff has already been accomplished. It was nice to just be in the dirt almost seeing the plants grow. As the morning moved on we decided to transplant the random mixed up pumpkin out of the bed and into the three sisters patch where it would spread its leaves and grow full on. It did not look so happy by the time the third graders arrived so the kids and I watered it and we explained even though the plant looked like it was dying that it could just as easily come back full fledged to life. The kids loved that!

As we walked them through the five senses we examined the radishes, which are huge and a nice reddish pink color which makes for a nice sight observation. They were fully amazed by the tiny green frogs hiding in the pineapple plants and we observed them the longest. Oh the beautiful minds of children.

So even though the morning was a quiet one the garden full of children is a wonderful sight and being able to teach them something they never knew is a priceless thing. The garden looks amazing as we stood there in the silence once the kids left. All of garden is so green and crisp looking; it is quite a happy sight.

A foggy day in London town but a sunny one in St. Petersburg

We began our day as the Floridian sun shined on the Edible Peace Patch bringing the temperature to a toasty eighty-four in the middle of October. We were amazed to see how much the plants have grown since last week. It seems that every time we turn around the plants have doubled in size. But you won't hear us complain about this. We were quite ecstatic to find infantile watermelons, flower buds on the bush beans, and baby okra poking through. Unfortunately many of our corn plants have decided to produce tassels prematurely. We have yet to decide what to do about this problem. We may need to remove the tassels to encourage the corn to continue to reach for the sky. The small tree frogs are still inhabiting our pineapple plants. The kids are always extremely excited to see them during their weekly garden lesson. This week and last week we were focusing on observations for our lesson. Observations made about the garden included soft green polka dotted watermelon leaves, gourd leaves that smelled like "spicy hot dogs", stinky compost, wet dirt, quiet wind in the trees, and carrots that tasted like strawberries (seriously). Today we focused on watering and weeding. The sedge is finding it harder to poke through the wood chips we spread, but some sedge is persistent. We planted some more rosemary in the herb garden (the previously planted rosemary never took). We also planted dill in the "nest" bed. The nest now has garlic, Mrs. Robinson's class' radishes, nasturtiums, and dill (that I am aware of). Tomorrow is our last day in the garden before our Fall break officially starts. It will prove to be a fun, relaxed day.

nine weather, nice plants = happy people

It was a very pleasant Wednesday in the garden. After these past couple of colder days the weather is now perfect perfect perfect, so perfect its worth saying three times! Although we have been wearing our winter jackets recently, the plants know better than us, and have thrived through the cold front. If one were to go just a week without visiting the garden they would be surprised with the extreme change that it goes through in such a short period of time! The watermelon has completely embraced its new wrap-around trellis and the garlic is shooting up wonderfully. These young shoots are one of my favorite plants to get the kids to smell as they can sometimes guess whats growing beneath. Today the crew played with worms… harvesting the poo and scattering it around the Native Garden. As always in events such as these, its nice to think about the plant in attention. How exciting it must be to receive such a nutritious treat! After a good watering and a night spent taking in the worm’s gifts, the Native Garden should be a happy community of corn and squash. Tomorrow should be just as gorgeous. Florida’s fall has proven to be the perfect season for growing lovelies and the happiness of the plants is contagious. We do need to pay special attention to the aloe however. It just has not found its way in the Peace Patch yet. I do still have hope though, we should all make sure and send our love to our healing friend. Peace for now, I hope everyone has a happy Thursday and Friday and then lets that happiness explode into their fall break!

Chilly Mornings in the Schoolyard

Today was the second morning in a row of chilly gardening mornings. Granted, Florida chilly doesn't even come close to Northern chilly, but we of thin blood bundled up greatly before trekking out to do our work. Since I go out to the Peace Patch both Monday and Tuesday mornings, I was very happy that this morning turned out to be a lot warmer than yesterdays; half way through I was able to take off one of my shirt layers! Despite this aversion to cold, or perhaps because of it, we kept very busy in the garden, mostly with weeding. We were able to weed the Three Sister garden, some of the beds, and the back part of the trench where the marigolds and sunflowers have recently sprouted. Other than weeding we dug up the parts of the Butterfly Garden that were full of weeds and replanted flower seeds that we hope will grow. We planted new seeds as well as some of the seeds we used for the Butterfly Garden last semester. We also transplanted a volunteering tomato that was growing in the Amaranth to the tomato bed. And finally, once it had warmed up a bit, we gave the garden a little watering to quench it's thirst. Unfortunately our shift hasn't seen any children yet, but we can't wait to show them all the new growth once we do!

On A Clear Day

Today was a beautiful day in the garden. We were greeted by two new portables in the field, and although they are not very aesthetically pleasing, they will be great for the school and the kids. I’m actually pleased to get more kids out in the vicinity of the garden – hopefully they will see it and get as excited about it as we are.

The weather today was gorgeous, the cool blue of the clear sky mimicking the last of the cold front from this weekend. And not only was the weather perfect, but we had a wonderful group of second-graders come out for our observation lesson. In the community circle we talked about our sense of hearing, and played a game to get them to start thinking about the garden in terms of their senses. We had them sit down, close their eyes, and quietly listen to the sounds around them. They were to count how many sounds they heard around them. Though toward the end they got distracted by the presence of a frog (probably a stray from the pineapples), I was surprised as to how insightful some of their answers were. We then divided them into groups and talked to each of them about how to observe like scientists, and took them to different beds to observe using a different sense each time. The kids in my group were great – very attentive and curious, and they seemed happy to be there. All the kids seemed to enjoy it quite a bit, and they were able to answer our questions quite well.

After our first group of kids we spent the rest of our time watering and weeding, since we didn’t have a second group of kids come out. For a little while we spent time spreading out some of the radishes and planting the eggplant that was in starter pots, but most of the time we were weeding. Though it feels like we weed more than anything else in the garden, I’ve noticed that when we weed, we have an opportunity to talk to each other more than we usually do. Its one of those nice things about being with a group of people that is working towards a common goal – during the downtime, we find commonalities that allow us to come together and work together in a positive way. So, maybe weeding isn’t that bad after all.

Serenity

The garden was a very quiet place today. Due to teacher’s work day school was out. The lack of small feet shuffling in the corridors or songs carrying from the playground cursed the gardened into a simple hush today. Everything was bright green and growing steadily in the silence but without children the school felt surreal. We spent some time surveying the growth and took a moment to stand back to truly appreciate how far the garden has come in these first few weeks of school. The colors in the beds felt amplified to me due to the lack of movement around us. My eyes carried from bed to bed assessing each plant and its counterparts who have become part of who I am and what I believe it. But then I found myself contemplating if it was the garden has become part of me or if it is I who has become part of them. After contemplating the interesting concept of belongings I realize everything belongs as it is and nothing truly ever belongs to an individual. We may work in the garden but it too works for us by growing and blooming, and along the same lines we belong to the team who creates and nurtures the garden but really the truth is we belong in the garden and in turn the garden belongs with us. I had a beautiful moment of true serenity surveying the garden after a peaceful afternoon rain shower. I felt proud and part of something more important than I had anticipated. Finally I came to the realization that the garden is as much a teaching tool as it is an escape. And it has certainly become an escape for me to reflect on my thoughts and life.

Another wonderful Thursday in the garden...

It was another beautiful day in the garden! As the days get shorter and the air cools down a little, it gets more and more enjoyable.

Everything is growing like crazy. The watermelon plant has reached epic proportions and has thankfully been restrained by a trellis so it has not taken over the garden (yet). The beans are growing so fast they look completely different every time I come over. We thinned them out some today, to give them a little more breathing room, but we will probably have to do it again. There are still tiny frogs in the pineapple plants. They are really cute. Although a few of the kids screamed, most of them are super excited when I tell them to look in between the leaves of the pineapple and they see the frogs.

The kids today were adorable as usual. We practiced using our five senses to make observations about the garden. They liked comparing the different textures of the leaves and smelling the soil the best. We gave them all little pieces of carrot to taste while we were in the community circle. Some of them were really excited, and some less so, about the prospect of eating a carrot. One kid, after biting into it said, “I don’t like carrots, but this tastes good.”

We shall convert them all into vegetable lovers yet! Happy gardening!

The Garden Mantra

Water and weed. Water and Weed. Water and Weed. Water and weed.

As we continue quenching the perpetual thirst of the parched plants, and uprooting the seemingly immortal, stubborn grasses from their prohibited squatting of the beds and pathways, we are all acting in obedience to the garden mantra which is engrained into our karma yoga ( the duties of daily life which are devoted to a greater good/ community)a.k.a wonderful work. So the day began with such, the usual routine of saturating everything in the garden heavily, and removing intruers from in and around the beds. We managed to finish weeding the center pathway, the beds, the right side of the sunflower trench, and even a little of the top trench. The aloe’s dwelling place was also fully weeded and the population increased, with the welcoming of 4 new, healthy green aloe plants. Hopefully these fresh, vibrant aloe plants will prove themselves as positive role models and set an example of what the other aloe plants should aspire to live up to. Although a few of the original, more fragile looking aloe transplants do appear to be letting out a few new, young shoots.

The cafeteria kitchen provided us with several bags of old, rotten food, which they saved for us as a helpful addition to our compost piles, which were graciously accepted and immediatley poured into a deep hole in the of both piles and thoroughly covered.

When the children came out to join us in the garden, we practiced making observations, utilizing all of our senses as we moved through various parts of the garden. We smelled the delicious odors of decomposition in the compost heaps. We felt the textures of different leaves, learning about how gourds have rough, sort of spiky-like leaves and how pepper leaves are a little bumpy, but mostly smooth and how pineapple leaves are very smooth until you stick your finger at the very tip and get pricked by its nasty point. We saw how tall the corn and how much the watermelon have grown, and how fast all has changed, in only a week’s passing! We talked about how things in the garden taste- how certain peppers are really spicy and how watermelons are sweet, but how corn is sometimes sweet, too. We tried to hear how things were growing in the garden, but really only heard the sounds of laughter from people enjoying themselves in the garden. One could assume that joy is a most crucial song for a garden, too.
And so go all souls within the garden realm singing in silence the eternal mantra:

Water and weed and smile. Water and weed and smile. Water and weed and smile. Water and weed and smile.

To Tame the Beast!

Today was an extremely productive day! While we did not have children come out today, we set to work on the daunting task of curving the greedy watermelon away from the sweet potatoes and in its rightful bed. We took a few minutes to come up with ideas of putting some sort of fencing around the bed to make the watermelon go "up and over" using resources we already had. We decided to use the red trellises that were donated to us last year at the corners of the bed for posts, and to use the other trellises that had unfortunately broke during the horrible storm last semester as fencing. The trellis pieces fit perfectly across the short ends of the bed, but for the longer sides we had to be a little innovative by screwing the pieces into each other and then screwing all the pieces on one side into a middle piece for stability. We then secured everything together using twine and fishing wire. It was an awesome team effort and we had a ton of fun while doing it! All I can think of now as I look back on the memory is "With our power's combined, we are Captain Planet!" And I certainly feel like a hero, too!

Even with that exhausting task, we managed to give the garden a very very thorough watering. We turned the compost and watered it, as well. Lastly, we also made a discovery! In the cucumber bed...there might be a zucchini and pumpkin plant mixed in with the cukes. Woops! But at least they're in a similar family, and vegetables are vegetables no matter where they're planted. And now I only wonder if the kids will be able to tell the difference between the leaves when we have them come out...