Sprouts and other delights.

After a busy Winter Term, cleaning and supplementing and harvesting and picking, the Spring semester is here. The garden enters its second year. (Happy Birthday Edible Peace Patch!) We have learned some things and hope to have a unusually productive harvest in late April. Many of the seeds that have already gone into the ground, which includes beans and watermelon and tomatoes and sunflower, are the results of last years' crops. The soils with which we supplemented the raised beds, also the by-product of last year, the results of a healthy compost releasing a few more yards of soil.
Next week the Lakewood students return. We have seeds to identify and plant, cardboard to be laid for weed control, and composts to be looked at and turned once again. The Edible Peace Patch garden will be growing beans and butterflies this Spring. The life science unit focuses on Life Cycles this spring and so we will plant beans and watch them grow (every second grade student will get their own plant). We are still looking for donations of butterfly weed. Our one butterfly plant seems to be heavily infested with orange mites and may or may not make it.
We built up some soil in the grounds just south of the pineapple plants, and planted six mounds of watermelon. We hope to have a healthy melon patch by late April as well. The hard frost that came in January seemed to knock the wind out of the pineapple plants, but on closer inspection this afternoon, I would say most of them are still alive. However, we plan to use these for lesson for the fifth graders about the effects of environment on plants. Each class will get to start a new plant next to the one that is recovering. The smaller pictures here are, in order from top to bottom, tomato, bush bean, nasturtium, all from garden seeds. The rains this morning drenched everything. But soon we will need to water on the weekend as well. The garden will be ready for students on Monday. We have posted recent photos from the garden at our flickr site. Everyone cannot wait for the new semester.