Here’s a look at what’s happening in the garden this month:

The sixth graders helped put a fresh layer of straw mulch around the fruit trees.  (Note that the mulch is pulled away from the tree trunk–that’s so the trunk doesn’t get wet and disease prone.)

We’ve had luck with this blackish-purpleish heirloom tomato called “Indigo.”

Our school had a lot of remodeling and shuffling of classes this summer, and the garden ended up with an extra white board.  Hanging on the fence in front of the table, it’s ideal for teaching lessons in the garden.

The five kids that served as garden ambassadors for two years are now recognized in the habitat garden.

An idea from a long time ago that I’d like to get going is to have a sensory garden.  I’m thinking this might be a collection of plants in containers, so I added our first specimen this week:  the irresistible “lambs ear.”

Don’t you just love volunteers, of all kinds?

Here’s a cool thing about school gardens: they are not perfectly manicured showpieces but learning spaces.  So you forget about your oregano and it goes a little crazy, flowering and seeding?  Leave it!  It’s pretty, you can teach about the plant life cycle, and you encourage the pollinators.

Two baby milkweed plants I got from another school garden.  It’s fun to think a monarch butterfly might find them; it’s also fun to think they came from a kindred project.