Peas Pretty Please

Pickin Peas, and I landed on my knees.  Gonna eat all I want cause you can't catch me.  So says the pesky rabbit from the book titled, Pickin Peas, a folktale retold by Margaret Read MacDonald.  Luckily we haven't had any rabbits trying to get our peas. We did all the picking of the peas and then used them to make an Orange and Honey Pea Salad. Delicious!

After we finished our salad, the food scraps were placed in the compost pile which just so happened to be the other topic of class.  So much of our garbage can be composted instead of ending up in the landfill.  Fruit and veggie scraps, paper bags, newspaper, grass clippings, tea bags, coffee grounds and filters, and even hair can all be thrown in the compost pile.  Billions of microbes (worms too) breakdown the materials into a rich additive for soil.  Although we could not see the workhorses of the compost pile, the microbes, we did dig in to spot all the other critters that make it their home.  We turned the search into a game of Compost Bingo. 

Garden Anywhere

When you think of a garden do you see a flat field with rows of veggies?  Gardens can come in all shapes and sizes.  You can have one in your backyard where grass use to grow.  You could have one on your balcony of your apartment, you could even have one right in the middle of the city.  That is where Will Allen put his garden but he called it the Growing Table.  He had a dream and put it into action and now spreads the joy of growing fresh food with others.  At our garden, we are working on a Rain Gutter Garden that grows food even if all you have is concrete under your feet.  Not only that, but it waters itself too.  The system uses capillary action to draw water up, defeating gravity to water the plants in the buckets above.  The garden kids made mini versions of this system with 2L pop bottles. 

The garden is definitely in full spring or should we say summer.  We made a big salad out of the lettuce, spinach, and broccoli in the garden.  We washed and dried it with a salad spinner which was quite the popular job.  

 Everyone tried some and most had seconds.  Isn't it great seeing everyone enjoying a fresh salad straight from the garden?

 The garden kids also played a board game called Harvest Time.  It is a cooperative game in which you must plant all your veggies before fall comes and it becomes too cold.  Let's hope we can remember that in our garden. 

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Superheroes To The Rescue

There are villains lurking in every garden.  Luckily, there are even more superheroes including you and me!

The sweet bunny, so cute and cuddly can eat up all your lettuce.  The beautiful white butterflies you see gracefully fluttering through the sky will lay their eggs on your broccoli and cabbage plants and when they hatch will feed on the leaves.  The mice that scurry around at dusk will hoard some of the harvest for themselves.  These animals all have a place in the World, we just try to keep these villains out of the garden.  We can do this by encouraging other animals into the garden for a meal.  Animals like frogs, beetles, and birds. 

 Slugs just may be the biggest (or smallest) villain of all in the garden.  Slugs love the baby plants and will come out each night to grab a snack.  We tested different ways to deter slugs from eating our plants.  Copper pennies (pre-1984), eggshells, and copper tape were used in our experiment.  I don't think the pennies worked so well...

Copper is suppose to give the slugs a slight electric shock probably similar to when you slide down a plastic slide in summer.  This slug didn't seem to mind at all.  The eggshells are suppose to deter slugs by poking the slugs gelatinous body.  The slugs climbed in between the broken shells.  Maybe we could just be buddies like in the story we read My Buddy Slug.  The garden is really growing and lots of lettuce and spinach are ready for harvest!! 

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