Later in the year we were approached by IGH Park and Rec. They wanted to start a community garden and they felt like they needed some kids to be a part of it. It was a pretty natural fit. We let the kids last year plant a garden with little rhyme or reason to it. There were about 4 corn plants, maybe 1,000 tomato plants and of course pumpkins. If you do not remember what happened with the pumpkins in the fall I invite you to read back into October in this blog. Let me know if the links to the TV news and newspaper are still active. I might like to make a copy of those.
This year we have been approaching the garden with a little more purpose. We have been planning and doing lots in the classroom that will relate to the project that we will be starting very soon. We recently found out that the park and Rec. Dept received a large grant from a seed company and we will be a part of that grant. We will get lots of plants for free for our garden.
The part of this project that I have looked forward to the most in the winter time has been a video conference with the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum. They did about 2.5 hours of lessons with the kids about where food comes from and how to grow things in Minnesota. It was a lot of fun and a big learning day!
Enjoy the pictures:
Here the kids are listening carefully to what Randy, our instructor, had to say about where food comes from and the importance of buying local. Our garden will be about as local as you can get!
This is a picture of the same thing from the other direction. It gives you a picture of what the kids were seeing.
More talking about food. Here is the new food group pyramid. Most of the things in that diagram we can grow in our garden
The kids are getting ready to make sweet potato pie!
In this picture, Randy is telling us a story about the Three Sisters. Those are plants that grow in a garden and take care of each other so we have to do much less work. Perfect for a community garden where we might not get to water and weed every day.
MMMmmmmmm. Sweet potato pie!
