Tuesday, April 13th

Everything is growing! The second graders measured their bean plants on Tuesday and a couple of the bushes went beyond their rulers! It's so exciting to see exponential growth occur within the garden, since throughout the previous weeks the only changes in measurements of the bean plants were by half an inch, if we were lucky. The second graders can also now make the observation that the bean plants have flowers, and soon will have beans to see and more importantly eat!

Right before spring break, when I looked at the garden I was truly concerned for the harvest festival. Thankfully,

everything is on its way at last! With this growth, we've found SO many volunteer plants! A sweet potato was found near the carrots two weeks ago, and the sweet potatoes keep popping up in the broccoli bed! Tomato volunteers are

everywhere! It looks as if some were intermingled in the starter trays, and others just decided to seed themselves.

We've been pulling a radish or two every class to allow the students to taste them so they're almost gone, but we planted them in the beds where peppers and eggplants were to be planted (but they never grew in the starters). Everything else seems to be in bloom, so it'll be ready soon!

Unfortunately, with this exponential growth, we've found bad bugs in the garden. Last Thursday we found a white grub in the sweet potato bed, which upon further investigation will eat at the sweet potatoes, not harming them, but making them ugly. Kaylie and I also found a caterpillar, on the butterfly bush that will become a monarch!

Speaking of butterfly bushes, we started planted them! The second grade class was really excited to get to dig in the soil (until they started putting it all over themselves) and I'm sure they will all keep a close eye on the bushes, of course claiming they planted the one

that's grown the most.

With the exponential growth, we'll just have to see what we get for harvest festival! I hope it's almost everything!