The low-hanging fruit?

Posted on April 14, 2013 by kidsingardens

If you’ve been to Julian, you’ll know we are associated with one thing above all else: apples. Orchards, apple pie, the annual Apple Days celebrations, apple-themed gifts in the shops, etc.

Say Julian–think apples.

And every day in our cafeteria we serve apples from Oregon and Washington State, even when Julian apples are in season.

This is one of a million ways in which our food systems are disconnected. It happens all around the world, to the detriment of our planet (all that transportation!) and our palate (stored and shipped food is often inferior, for obvious reasons.)

Naturally, in my role as Farm to School planning grant director, this is one of the first things I’m tackling. And as simple as it sounds—swap out one apple vendor for another—it’s really very complicated, in ways that you can only appreciate when you dive into the specifics of the ways things are, as I’ve been doing.

Big thought for the day: systemic change is hard.

But not hopeless. We are working away diligently on the ways things could be by investigating how to get local apples and pears onto our school lunch menu.

Until then, we’re going to do one better: plant apple trees on our campus.

Yesterday the organizer of the newly-formed Julian Apple Growers Association, Teak Nichols, came by school to spend the afternoon putting bare root trees in the ground with our Garden Ambassadors. Raised here in Julian, Teak has a passion for preserving the collective knowledge base, economic importance and cultural resource of apples. So we worked with a handful of kids to enlarge our small orchard. He’ll be back to teach pruning, and I imagine many other things as we connect his group with our efforts at school.

Teak had just asked a question like, “Who wants to plant the Fuji?” Um, is the enthusiasm of these kids coming across?

Photo courtesy of Marisa McFedries

Under Teak’s instruction, the kids dug the holes, properly sited the trees, filled them in, watered, staked, labeled and wrapped sunburn protection around the trunks. (Notice their official gear. The shirts were meant for formal occasions, but these kids love any excuse to put on their ambassador shirts.)

Photo courtesy of Marisa McFedries

Beautiful weather, outdoor education, the promise of fruit, excited kids….I’m not great at containing my excitement.

Photo courtesy of Marisa McFedries

Photo courtesy of Marisa McFedries

Garden Tour, April 2013

Posted on April 9, 2013 by kidsingardens

Join me as we take our periodic stroll around the garden!

Junior High students often change the message on the blackboard hung in their garden. Yes, welcome indeed!

I might have mentioned we are planting a lot of peas to get ready for our first Harvest of the Month program in May. (Pinecones are to discourage critters from walking in the bed.)

As we were harvesting the broccoli, one child told me she didn’t know that the part of broccoli we eat is curled up flowers. I told her we’d leave one plant in the ground to flower so she could see for herself.

Broccoli is also coming up in one of our container gardens. That’s one of the funny things about school gardens—mystery plants! (Someone, at some time, had an idea, a vision, a spare plant…who knows?)

The strawberry plants look luscious. Keep. meaning. to. enclose. them. in. nets.

The tulips are finally up in the breast cancer awareness ribbon. Watching them bloom took on new meaning for me this year as two very brave and beautiful friends of mine have kicked cancer’s butt in the last year.

New child-created signage on the bulletin board on the CATCH nutrition concept: go, slow and whoa foods.

We’ve been moving native strawberries out of this prime veggie growing location to the hillside around the fruit trees, as a move toward a permaculture fruit tree guild. We hadn’t moved all of them by Science Day though so I split the bed to make some room for pea planting, pinning back the strawberries with some white picket fencing we keep moving around the garden. Cute!

Someone donated this flag last year, and we fly it—announcing our allegiance to daffodils!

Mrs. Shull’s fourth grade class peas. Each child did a letter on an index card, I laminated them and kids taped them to bamboo skewers.

We have a gazillion wildflower seeds in the garden, from seed ball making activities, former projects, etc. Wildflowers have a special immunity in our garden. Wherever they want to pop up, we gladly let them stay.

This little donated table broke. No worrries. With a tree stump standing in, it makes another cozy little spot to hang out in the garden.

A local grape grower trimmed these for us! Our first crop this fall? (Stay tuned.)

Look who decided to bloom. (Oh little wisteria, you have no idea how close you were to being uprooted.)

Our honeysuckle reading teepee. Last week a child sitting inside yelled, “Mrs. Elisara! Come here! There’s a chrysallis at the top of the teepee!” Sure enough, a butterfly-to-be was dangling from the ceiling. (The president of the entomology club later ID’ed it.)

If you’re not familiar with Box Tops, they are the little pink coupons found on hundreds of products. Schools collect them and mail them in, receiving 10 cents for each one. It adds up, and at our school, the proceeds have been earmarked for the garden. Twice a year we receive a check. Here’s what we bought with our latest earnings: pea trellises, bean towers, seed starting mix, trays, compost, and our 3×3 raised bed frame.

Finally, it’s always good to step back and get the big picture!

What’s worthy of a 100th post? Compost!

Posted on April 6, 2013 by kidsingardens

The glories of compost….much ink has been spilled on this everyday miracle. Scraps of food that transform into “black gold” with leaves, water, air, time, and microbial mechanics. It’s poetry pay dirt, and it happens under our noses.

Our compost system at school is a passive system. In other words, we don’t get around to turning it very often and only harvest it about twice a year. Nonetheless, the magic still happens.

Garden Ambassador turning the bin with a pitchfork at recess:

Fourth grade students sifted the bottom layer of the bin into the wheelbarrow using stacked plant trays.

Ladies and gentleman, I present to you: the fruit and vegetable leftovers from Julian Elementary, ready for our next planting!

Science Day in the garden

Posted on April 3, 2013 by kidsingardens

Last Thursday was Science Day at our school during which students went from “station” to “station” spread across campus for science-based lessons. For example, San Diego Country Office of Education brought their traveling Splash Lab (microscopes and chemistry experiments) and Green Machine (soils, integrated pest management, water cycle) programs.

Almost every student passed through the garden for a 30-minute class. In the morning, we had the younger classes combined by grade so I divided the children into groups with an adult (teacher, parent, and/or aid) and explained that they would go to 5 different stations for 5 minutes each. Each station was set up with a clipboard of simple instructions and the necessary equipment. I went from group to group to answer questions, point things out and re-set materials.

Station One: Planting Peas

Station Two: Watering peas

Other classes had already planted peas in other beds. At this station kids observed their growth and watered.

Station Three: Storytime

Station Four: Smelling herbs

Station Five: Looking for habitat elements

Mrs. White demonstrating how our beautiful fountain turns on when she holds the panel to the sun. A wonderful day for hands-on learning!

Daffodil show: win-win-win-win…

Posted on March 27, 2013 by kidsingardens

This past weekend was the annual Daffodil Show in Julian. (Last year I gushingly detailed all of the reasons I love this community event here.)

After a brief chat on Friday about how to choose a prizewinning bloom, the students spread out to harvest.

What to choose?

Then after school I took my boys home to pick their personal entries.

Ethan almost backed out this year but decided to enter again after listening to his mother go on and on about the importance of tradition. (A fistful of ribbons, including a “court of honor” distinction later, he was glad he followed through, and I made him promise to do it every year until he graduates high school. We’ll see. Elliot’s in, for sure.)

A friend visiting from out-of-town jumped right in on the excitement, watching the boys key out and arrange their flowers. (The paper flowers hanging from the ceiling and the watercolor paintings on the wall were all done by kids at school.)

The youth division took up one full wall with a record amount of entries.

Photo courtesy of Anne Garcia

Marisa’s beautiful display with children’s essays. The photos are of kids planting at school and around town—a yearly tradition led by Sally Snipes.

Photo courtesy of Anne Garcia

The ribbons and some of the flowers are now proudly on display in the front office of the school.

My friend Anne summed it up well in a post-show e-mail:

I think the Youth Division MAKES the show! It adds so much pizazz and meaning to why we grow the flowers. Pure joy!

Summoning the foodie advisors

Posted on March 21, 2013 by kidsingardens

As part of our year-long Farm to School planning grant, I have pulled together a group of excellent people in Julian to serve as my advisory board. They are a gorgeous slice of our community: parents, gardeners, health practitioners, alumni, farmers, grant writers, chefs, camp directors, business owners, school staff, board members, etc. We met this month for the first time.

After briefly reviewing progress with the grant, I broke them in to groups to circulate around the room and jot down ideas on posters with headings like: “Ideas for getting discounted or free produce,” “Lesson and fieldtrip ideas,” and “Ways to celebrate National Food Day.” We met again as a large group to read through these ideas and further stimulate the brainstorming. As “chief researcher” in this process, I then compiled all of the ideas and am now following the leads. I am thrilled to have such a knowledgeable and passionate group of folks to learn from throughout the grant process.

I’m reminded of the necessity and beauty of collaboration, as this has been a good week for it. The owner of a local winery swung by school on the weekend to prune our grapevines. Garden Beneficials (and husbands) visited over the weekend and after school to transplant strawberries, water and pull some mystery rebar out of the ground. I’m heading out the door right now to collect a donation of seeds from our feed store.

It is no cliché when we say our garden grows community!

P.S. If you live in Julian and want to join the fun, you are welcome! Just give me a call or write me a note—our next meeting will be in May!

Seed packet literacy

Posted on March 15, 2013 by kidsingardens

To continue with my pea-brained ideas….

For Wednesday’s garden class, I had the class plant a bed of peas. Before we went out to the garden, we talked about “how to read a seed packet.” I copied the front and back of a packet and added questions around the perimeter. This was our opening activity.

Notice how the students have to look closely for the information in order to answer the question. To answer the question on trellises, they have to notice the adjective “self-supporting.” To know what days we should expect a pea, they have to find the “days to maturity.”

Then I gave each child a different seed packet. (I have lots, obviously.) I then asked them to form a line across the room, based on the name of their flower/vegetable, in alphabetical order. They had to talk to each other and shuffle themselves, A to Z. When they were in place, I asked them to read off their seed name, to see if we got it right! Then we did it again, according to “days to maturity” with one end of the spectrum being the shortest, the other the longest. It was fun to compare radishes at one end with onions at the other.

At that point, we had to get planting, but you could keep going with this game, having the kids line up according to planting depth, Latin names, months to plant, etc. Each one will demonstrate the different needs of plants as well as help kids look closely at all that information on a seed packet.

Love me a good mission statement

Posted on March 4, 2013 by kidsingardens

In my role as “school garden consultant” through Master Gardeners, I am now working with three schools. The school I met with recently in San Diego is just starting off with their project, and I am excited because they have all of the ingredients for an amazing garden: a supportive principal, a passionate lead teacher, other interested teachers, potential community partners, possible funding and an amazing space (Flat, sunny, with water! Oh my!)

As y’all know, good projects start with a mission statement. Some people find this part of the process tedious and kinda academic, but not me. How do you know what to do if you don’t know where you want to end up? As such, I like the process of writing out objectives. It helps keep me on track, sort our priorities, and assess progress.

Here is ours. We are in process of having an artist transfer this to a large sign for the garden, reminding us all of what we’re growing…

What we grow in the Julian Elementary Character Garden

We grow food.

We promote good nutrition by planting, tending, harvesting and eating organic fruit, vegetables and herbs.

We grow citizens.

We connect children to the natural world and create environmental stewards.

We grow character.

We learn leadership, responsibility, and respect when we work in the garden.

We grow practical gardening skills.

We learn the nuts and bolts of growing a garden.

We grow beauty.

We enjoy our peaceful, beautiful garden as it relaxes our bodies, inspires our minds, and ignites our creativity and imagination.

We grow academics.

We study biology, ecology and natural history in our garden classroom.

We grow stories.

We develop a “sense of place” as we build a garden that reflects who we are as individuals, as a school and as residents of Julian and the backcountry.

We grow community.

We create positive relationships among students, staff, parents and neighbors when we work together.

Teaching and tasting a “ray of California sunshine”

Posted on January 30, 2013 by kidsingardens

(Or citrus, as it used to be marketed for folks back East when citrus was being established here in southern California.)

Many of you know I am six weeks into my role as the Farm to School Coordinator, a postion funded by a USDA grant we received in the fall. It is a planning grant. In other words, I have been calling myself “chief researcher” in our district’s process of exploring what infrastructure modifications (i.e. school lunch program) and education programming (i.e. nutrition lessons, fieldtrips, garden expansion, etc.) are a good fit for our schools.

One thing I’m looking at is getting free or discounted produce (local, seasonal and preferable organic) to work into lessons for University of Wednesday. I haven’t figured this out yet, so last week I went to Whole Foods in Hillcrest and bought 5 each of every citrus item they had (excluding limes and lemons.) Cut into sixths, this was the minimum amount I needed for a class of 26. (It cost $50.)

I set up the fourth grade room in groups of six, with each seat having a plate, pencil, and taste test sheet. The citrus was set out in the middle of the table. A bag to the side was open for rinds, to be later sent to the compost.

Kids were to make their best guess on whether this was a new fruit for them. After tasting, they were supposed to give each a rating and one descriptive word.

I made a keynote presentation on citrus. We talked a little bit about the history of citrus and where different varieties are grown today. Here’s a story I told, like a botanical thriller (arms waving, eyes flashing):

In 1869, a serious citrus pest, the cottony-cushion scale was imported into the state, and within 15 years it threatened to destroy all of the citrus plantings in California. In the late 1800’s, an entomologist affiliated with the USDA, Albert Koebele, conquered the cottony-cushion scale with a natural predator of the pest imported from Australia……

If told dramatically, you can now pause for effect, and ask kids what they thought it was, before revealing it to be

….the Vedalia beetle, more commonly known as the LADYBUG or LADYBEETLE (capitalization mine) . It was the first spectacular biological-control success story.*

Then we took time to get up and wash our hands properly. Properly. It’s flu season.

And then we got to the fruit. I’d introduce one, give a few facts, and the kids would cut them into slices (with plastic knives.) We got into this groove and it took to the end of the period to finish all of the varieties. Kids loved it! I loved hearing them say things like, “I think I like the Cara Cara orange better than the Valencia” and “I’ve never had grapefruit before but I like this” and “I like the last tangerine better than the first tangerine which I already gave a 10. Can I give a 10 plus?”

*CaliforniaMaster Gardener Handbook, pg. 533.

Garden as hangout space

Posted on January 26, 2013 by kidsingardens

In the intial brainstorming about the garden at the junior high (“the Living Room”), it was agreed that one of the major objectives for this space was to create a green, inviting garden space in which kids would want to hang out. To this end, we wrote a grant for a BBQ, six tables, and 8 benches. They arrived right before vacation, and last Sunday afternoon a team of kids, parents, staff (and staff spouses!) put them in place.