REDUCE, REUSE, RECYCLE!

Today was a wonderful day to garden! My class comes out the last twenty minutes of my shift so the bulk of my time spent in the garden today was characterized by maintenance work.  Our carrots are coming up nicely but to help them along I weeded out all its competitors that found their way into their bed.  I also weeded out the cantaloupe’s side of another bed and started weeding by the pineapples.  On Friday a local man drove by the garden, saw what we were doing and offered to donate some plants from his own garden.  I watered them, the carrots and our starter cantaloupes. 

The lesson for this week is all about the 3 R’s: REDUCE, RESUE, RECYCLE!  The best part about this lesson is hearing what the kids have to say about different ways we can reuse household items such as plastic water bottles.  They are so creative!  They suggested using them as a vase for flowers and other plants, candle holders and containers to put things in.  To conclude the lesson we walked through the garden with the objective of seeking out various materials we reuse/recycle to make the garden look the way it does.  Examples of the things we noticed: we have a plastic cup which we used for a starter cup for plants, stumps from trees were made into a sitting ground for the kids, a broken up wooden trellis is what we use to mark what plants are in which beds, etc.  It was a lot of fun walking through the garden with the kids and having them point out these various usages of materials that could otherwise be discarded. 

-          Chelsea Ehmann