Saturn Elementary School Garden Groundbreaking & Kickoff Party

You’re all invited! I’ll be there representing National Gardening Association. Come out and say hi!

Date: Saturday, March 20, 2010
Time: 8:30am – 12:30pm
Location: Saturn Street Elementary School
Street: 5360 Saturn Street
City/Town: Los Angeles, CA

The Rings of Saturn are delighted to announce that Saturn has won a 2010 Give Back to Gro grant from Keep America Beautiful and Scott’s Miracle Gro Company. Finally, it’s time to build the garden!! The event will start (at 8:30am) with Mayor Villaraigosa’s presentation of a proclamation for the school, followed by a celebration of the NEW Saturn Edible Garden with activities for the whole family:

- Help build planter boxes and plant seeds and plants in the school’s new outdoor classroom
- Paint garden signs and create flower headbands
- Walk the Saturn Master Plan to ‘experience’ how the Saturn playground will be transformed into a community park!
- Enjoy lunch with your neighbors after a great morning of service

We’re also proud to announce that produce from the new Saturn Give Back to Gro garden will be donated to the First Presbyterian Church food pantry as part of our partnership with Plant a Row for the Hungry.

Also, Come and get tickets to the Chivas USA soccer game on March 26 against the Colorado Rapids!

10 Ways to Integrate School Gardens into Arts, Science, and Math

1) Make a scarecrow. See Atlanta Botanical Gardens 2009 Scarecrow Winners for inspiration.

2) Paint a sign. Nothing says Our Garden like a freshly painted sign. See 25 photos of garden signs from Life Lab.

3) Build a trellis. Trellises are needed throughout the year to support such vegetables as peas, pole beans, tomatoes, melons, cucumbers, and gourds. See trellis as art from Maine artist, Paul Jurutka.

4) Make a germinator to showcase germination process (see video.)

5) Read Seedfolks by Paul Fleischman. Some have turned the book into a school play. Others were inspired to make a movie.

6) Keep a journal. For scientific purposes we want to track the following: what we’re growing, when did we sow seeds, how long did the seeds take to germinate, how often do we water, how long does a plant take to mature (from seed to harvest), how big does a plant get (height and width), and how much does it yield.

Many other scientific experiments may be initiated with results tracked in a journal.  See Conducting an Experiment from cornell.edu.

7) Plant seeds of lettuce or cilantro and observe the different plant stages. Reserve one plant to be saved for seed. These plants (all annuals) will flower and seed within the school year. Students can observe the entire lifecycle of a plant (seed-to-seed), as well as learn to collect seeds for the following seasons.

8) Collect bugs and insects into a terrarium and observe their habitat and behavior.

9) For math students, examples of gardening equations:
a) If a row is 8 ft long and we space our carrots 3 inches apart how many carrots can we grow in one row?
b) Our pole beans grow 8 inches a week. How many feet will they be after 12 weeks?
c) My raised bed is 4ft x 8 ft x 1ft. How many bags of dirt (2 cubic feet each) does it take to fill the raised bed?

10) For more inspiration see School Garden Potpourri of Ideas

School Garden Training on the St. Lawrence University Campus, Canton, NY

From Green Pages, stlawu.edu

School Garden Training
Location: St. Lawrence University Campus
Date: March 30, 2010

School Garden Training on the St. Lawrence University Campus, Canton

This training is designed for those who already maintain a school garden project AND for those considering one.  It is open to school faculty and staff, parents, community members – all are welcome!

Presentations & workshops will include topics such as integrating garden projects into the curriculum, utilizing the harvest in classroom and cafeteria, and q & a sessions with successful project coordinators.  Details and registration to come in January 2010.  We hope you will plan to join us for this exciting training cosponsored by:  Health Quest MOVE & the Eat Well Play Hard Community Project of the St. Lawrence Health Initiative, Cornell Cooperative Extension of St. Lawrence County, GardenShare, UShare, Lettuce Turnip the Beet and the St. Lawrence Valley Teachers’ Learning Center.  Please share this information with anyone who may be interested.

A variety of grant opportunities for school garden projects are listed below (thanks to all who send these my way!).  Please contact me if you would like assistance planning a school garden project for this coming spring or with any other school gardening questions or ideas for St. Lawrence County.

1. Mantis Awards
Sponsor: Mantis
Award package: Mantis tiller/cultivators
Number of awards: 25
Who qualifies: community, school, and youth garden programs
Annual application deadline: March 1
http://www.kidsgardening.com/grants/mantis-criteria.asp

2. Public School Teachers Request
Sponsor: DonorsChoose.org
Award package:
Who qualifies: Teacher defined projects in schools Annual application deadline: Rolling
http://www.donorschoose.org/teacher/index.html

3. Community Food Projects Competitive Grants Program
Sponsor: USDA – CSREES
Award package:: $10,000 – $300,000
Number of awards: not specified
Who qualifies: private, nonprofit entities meeting specific requirements
Annual application deadline: May
http://www.csrees.usda.gov/fo/communityfoodprojects.cfm

4. 2010 Youth Garden Grants
Sponsor: National Gardening Assoc and Home Depot
Award package: $500 -$1000 gift cards
Number of awards: 100
Who qualifies: community, school, and youth garden programs
Annual application deadline: November 2nd
http://www.kidsgardening.com/ygg.asp

5. Champions for Healthy Kids
Sponsor: General Mills
Award package: $10,000
Number of awards: 50
Who qualifies: community-based groups that develop creative ways to help youth adopt a balanced diet and physically active lifestyle.
Annual application deadline: January 15, 2010
http://www.generalmills.com/corporate/commitment/champions.aspx

6 America the Beautiful Fund
http://www.america-the-beautiful.org/
Non-profit group receives seed donations from major seed companies. Sets of 50 packets of vegetables, flowers and herbs are available for the cost of postage and handling.

7. Outdoor Classroom Grant Program
The goal is to provide schools with additional resources to improve their science curriculum by engaging students in hands-on experiences outside the traditional classroom. All K-12 public schools in the United States are welcome to apply.
www.lowes.com

8.  Welch’s Harvest Grants
http://www.scholastic.com/harvest/

9.  Fiskar’s Project Orange Thumb
http://www.fiskars.com/content/garden_en_us/Garden/ProjectOrangeThumb

School Garden Preparation – Dorsey High School

Preparing a garden bed for seed sowing is a difficult task, in fact it is the most difficult task we’ll perform in the garden all year. Over the summer, weeds grows unfettered, plants die, and the soil is depleted of nutrition.

All those planting beds need to be cleared and amended.

Thankfully, at Dorsey High School, we had a few students show up for garden work on a Saturday and they did a fabulous job.

For approximately two and a half hours students weeded, removed bermuda grass, old plants, and completed some seriously needed site prep work.

See video, How to Amend a Raised Bed, to view the process of adding amendments (preferably organic compost) and turning (or aerating) the soil.

Support School Gardens – Contact Your Representative

On August 4, 2009, an amendment introduced by Senator Bernie Sanders of
Vermont to provide 2 million dollars to fund a “school community garden
pilot program” was unanimously approved as part of the Senate Ag
Appropriations Bill, which passed the Senate on the same date.

Gardens are powerful educational tools, providing opportunities for children to experience the natural world as they develop strong academic skills and positive attitudes toward fresh fruits and vegetables, and learn important sociological skills that enhance the quality of their lives. Says one teacher from the Arnold Schwarzenegger Charter Elementary School in California, “Children demonstrated a better understanding of concepts and applied them in more sophisticated ways after having instruction in the garden.”

The Sanders amendment funding the program will now go through the conference committee process with the House of Representatives.

I encourage you to contact your representatives in Washington to urge them to keep the funding for the program in the final Agriculture Appropriations bill.

Please click here to send a letter in support of the funding.

As you contact Congress about the bill, I recommend focusing on members of the conference committee, who are listed below. These are the members who will have the most sway over whether the funding is ultimately kept in the bill, and we anticipate that they will make their decision by the end of the September 2009. Thank you again for all of your help!

FOR MORE INFORMATION CONACT:
Office of Senator Bernard Sanders
332 Senate Dirksen Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20510
(202) 224-5141

School Starts Next Week, Be Prepared

School starts next week. For those with school gardens already in place now is the time to be ordering your seeds. For those who are starting from scratch see, How to Start and Maintain a School Garden.

If you’re not sure what is seasonal for your area check out your local cooperative extension. In mild winter areas like Southern California one can use the vegetable planting schedule from DigitalSeed.com

We already have seeds of cilantro, lettuce, arugula, and marigolds that we saved from last year. Be sure to set aside one or two of your plants this year to use for seeds. Not only does it show students the full life cycle of an annual plant it also saves your garden program some much needed funds.

For those who are buying, the following seed companies are worth looking into:

1) Botanical Interests – Based in Colorado, BI is a family owned business know for their large selection of certified organic varieties.

2) Baker Creek – Based in Missouri, with a new outpost in Northern California, BC is known for its large selection of heirloom varieties.

3) Gourmet Seed – If your fava beans must be Moroccan, and nothing else will suffice, GS is your place.

A list of what we’ll be growing this year includes the following: arugula, beets, bok choy, broccoli, cabbage, carrots, cauliflower, chives, cilantro, fava beans, fennel, garlic, kale, lettuce, mint, onions, oregano, parsley, peas, potatoes, radishes, rosemary, sorrel, spinach, swiss chard, tat soi, thyme, and turnips.

Lastly, perhaps you just want to throw some seeds into a container outside the classroom. If so, consider cool weather flowers such as stocks or snapdragons, a winter hardy herb garden or such easily grown veggies as lettuce, spinach and radishes.

Local kids learning to garden in school

Students at different LAUSD campuses are having fun learning how to garden.

Click link above for video.