Greetings from the Garden!

Here's to spring showers- March saw us posting a rainfall total of over eight inches.  Many of our student scientists were astounded to see our rainfall gauge in the garden register over 5 inches in the space of just a week.  Our plants have soaked it up though.  Our fruit trees are sending out tentative green leaves and many of our herbs are reemerging from dormancy with verdant new growth. 

It is an exciting time to be a gardener.  In my family those of us who suffer from the gardening bug start to twitch and mumble to ourselves as the days grow longer and warmer.  Spring is afoot and there is much to be done.  I have been known to wander about in the garden after dark with my headlight on searching for the multi-legged invaders who viciously mowed down my seedlings.  I am also given to compulsive list making because there is so much that needs to happen such as planting potatoes, building nesting boxes, or adding compost to the soil. 

I can't tell all of you how happy I am to be seeing the signs of spring madness in many of our student farmers at lunch time.  Some of the signs are as follows:

1.  Using rulers to measure your seedling growth

2.  Having a sore pointer finger from using a spray bottle on aphids (real or make believe)

3.  Making daily check-ins on plants just to ensure everything is doing okay

4.  Creating elaborate twine creations to hold peas in place

5.  Adding straw as mulch one day and then removing it the next because you want everything to be just PERFECT

6.  Muttering at insects that might be threating your plants

We are all having a great time.  I am not sure how much we will have to sell at our first Farmers Market at the end of this month, but we are sure learning a lot.  Over the past two weeks, the student farmers and I have had some really profound conversations about advertising.

So, what else happened last month you ask?  We got our baby apple trees planted in pots (we lovingly refer to them as sticks.)  We FINALLY got the four planter boxes up top ready for classes to use.  1st graders have explored the wind by pretending to be trees and 2nd graders have questioned whether or not seeds are actually alive. 

We have also had a huge outpouring of support for the garden this month.  Many folks from the larger El Cerrito and Richmond communities have donated plants both for our garden and for our class on Edible Perennials this month.  The City of El Cerrito has promised us free mulch and a number of local nurseries and horticulture programs have given us discounts or free items.  Thanks everyone!

Hello all,

We have had another great month in the garden! 

First of all, I'd like to thank everyone who has helped during the month of February. 

Here's to all of the moms and kids who came to our last work day and pulled out succulents, raked, watered, weeded, pick-axed, and just generally had a really nice time. 

Thanks to everyone who donated pots and other containers for our succulent transplant project- our wonderful music teacher, a couple of parents, my mom, and a friend of one of our teachers- they all gave us some great pots. 

A shout out to the East Bay Nursery for giving us 10% off of seedlings and a bunch of free seeds.  Please see out Community Partners page for more information about this great local business.

Thanks to Dianne Martinelli, a fellow Master Gardener, who came out to our garden and gave me some great advice about how to transplant our succulents.

Gracias to Starwood Hotels, Leah with Berkeley Unified School District, and Kathryn Quanbeck for donating 4 tiny heirloom apple trees.

And finally, big hugs of gratitude to everyone who has made me feel so valued over the course of the last month.  The cards, emails, and chats in the hallway have been really nice.  I know why I do this work, but it is always invigorating to know that others see the importance of garden education as well.

Now let's get to what is happening in the garden.  New classes have begun and now that we are done learning about the Laws of the Land (Ms. Molly's Garden Rules) we are starting to talk about weather, plants, insects and how to be scientists in the garden.  Student scientists in the 1st and 2nd grades have begun to keep nature journals where they record their garden observations.

Lunch time in the garden has been very busy lately.  We have been tearing out plants and roots to get our orchard area ready for whatever fruit trees we might scrounge up later on.  We have also been working on getting all of our raised beds on the upper level ready for classes to use.  A bunch of girls from Ms. Bennett's class have taken over a small portion of the garden to grow beets, radishes, and greens.  This same class had a great Valentine's Day celebration that featured fruit salad and a salad made from lettuce and radishes grown in our very own garden.  What a refreshing change from all of the super-sugary treats that usually come with this heart-themed holiday.

I want to end with the two things that are warming the cockles of my  heart right now.  First of all, yoga with Ms. Best's 4th/5th grade class is pretty fabulous.  We are doing our downward dogs, our cobras, and our guided reflective time every Tuesday from 1:10-1:40.  Come join us if you have a yen to stretch and breathe.  We (the kids and I) feel like this is a great time to calm down, go within, and sometimes be just a little silly.

And last but not least, the 3rd grade farmers have taken over the garden.  Yep that's right!  We have 21 different farms (with names like Leafy Farms, Tiki Farms, Friendly Farms, etc.) who "own" 21 different patches of earth.  The plans have been made, the seeds have been ordered and delivered, and now the planting has begun.  Our farmers are growing lettuce, radishes, herbs, strawberries, greens, artichokes, peas, etc.  I want to encourage you to come out and visit us during 3rd class times in the garden or during lunch time on Tues-Thurs because the conversations and work that is being done is just incredible.  You never know what you might see- farmers hunting for worms to add to their patch of earth or maybe someone whispering a blessing to seeds that they are planting.  Often these days I come across farmers who are adding compost to their box, tilling the soil, watering, weeding, pruning, making interesting trellis structures, or sometimes just chatting with their fellow farmers.  I am often hosting 20-30 farmers a day in the garden during lunch time, and every day at least one of them tells me just how much they love being in the garden.  To which I can always truthfully answer, "So do I."

Welcome to a new year in the garden.  The Year of the Dragon sees us roaring into 2012 with a bunch of new projects on the docket.  I have much to share with you...

First of all, this month has really seen the student gardeners come into their own as problem-solvers and team players.  We have students who have taken on the responsibility of watering the plants in the front of the school, and we have others who have devised a number of unique solutions to garden problems.  One group of girls rigged up a system to keep our potato baskets from blowing over, while another group of kids secured our rain gauge and prepared our rain barrels for forecasted storms.  A group of 5th grade boys made a structure that I jokingly refer to as the "boy's clubhouse," but they insist it is for meditation during yoga class.  How cool!  The 3rd and 4th graders also took on the task of carefully packing away all of our holiday ornaments and lights.  Many of these kids have been coming to the garden with me for two and half years now, and I am really beginning to see a sense of stewardship and innovation.  It is exciting!

There has also been a lot of hard labor during lunch in the garden.  The students finished moving all of the compost, and they spread straw over most of the active beds.  Lots of sweeping and raking keeps our classroom area looking nice and slowly we have been moving the log rounds into place in the classroom area.  The 3rd graders have been on daily pest patrol and I can safely say that our aphid population is in serious peril! We balance all of this hard work with lots of good munching.  This month we have been eating radishes, lettuce, chard, kale. broccoli, lemons, strawberries and spinach.

I have had the honor of practicing yoga with Ms. Best's 4th/5th grade class this month.  These student yogis have stretched muscles they didn't even know they had, done a lot of good breathing, and laughed as we tried to compose silly poses that looked like things in the garden.  Thanks to Ms. Best and her class for being open-minded enough to do this work with me. 

We finally had some rain- our rain gauge in the garden recorded over 2 inches in three days, and many buckets and other containers had to be emptied onto plants after the storm.  The student gardeners really appreciated this brief respite because they have been doing more watering than normal for this time of year.  Let's hope we get some more showers.

Please scope out our photos for the month- we took some good ones.  Also make sure you take a look at our upcoming events and what donations we need to keep our garden running smoothly.

Last, I'd like to leave you with something I was pondering as I was leaving school today.  I was walking across the parking lot and I saw a "weed" growing out of the top of an orange cone! This clover managed to send up a stem almost two feet in diffuse sunlight to pop its leaves out of the hole at the top.  Amazing!  We often spend a lot of time and money amending soil, spraying chemicals on the ground, and just generally worrying about our plants, but left to their own devices they usually manage to do just fine. This reminded me of one of my favorite books as a kid- The Wump World by Bill Peet.  It is a sweet story about how nature perseveres in spite of the best efforts by a  group of "aliens" to completely concrete over the world. Written in 1970 it still makes a disturbing amount of sense today.  Whether it is climate change, concrete jungles, or morphing soil conditions, plants are constantly having to adapt in order to survive. Sometimes I think we really could learn a lot about resiliency by studying the plants around us. 

Happy New Year to everyone.  Let's hope that in 2012 our garden prospers!

It was a pretty quite month in the garden since we spent half of the month on winter break.  Thanks to those folks who helped out over the break- we don't normally have to water the garden at this time of year, but thus far we are WAY behind our usual rainfall.

The holiday lights were a big hit.  Thanks to everyone who helped to make those happen.  They looked great over the break, and many family appreciated them at the Winter Sing.  One of our first tasks this next week will be to take them all down and pack them away for next year.

We also got the whole hillside below the 4th/5th grade windows planted.  We installed a number of low growing native groundcovers and shrubs that will eventually beautify the hillside and prevent erosion.  The lunch time gardeners did an excellent job of breaking ground and digging holes for these little babies.  We also put signs up for all of the new plants that include both common and Latin names- and this was a learning experience for everyone!  We had hoped to benefit from the usual rain at this time of year, but instead we have been watering by hand until the plants get established.

This month we harvested artichokes, lemons, herbs, chard, kale, clementines, and figs. We made a delicious salad from lettuce grown in the garden and we made teas from various herbs such as mint, lemon balm, lemon verbena, and marjoram.  We used local honey and lemons from our garden to make our teas extra special.

Our after school garden club wrapped up, and wow-they made some great signs.  Most of our regular crops are now sporting colorful signs that identify them by name.  Way to go gardener-artists!

I also finished with the first "semester" of classes in the garden.  Thanks to all of the kindergarten, first and second grade students, teachers, and families.  I had a lovely time learning with all of you.  In January, I will be doing yoga in the garden with Ms. Best's class, working lunchtimes, and finishing up a number of pressing garden projects.  Then in February, I will begin working with the rest of the 2nd and 3rd grade classes in the garden.  I am super-excited about some of our plans- I hear there might be a student-run farmer's markets in the works!

And finally, I would like to extend a special thank you to Apple Szostak, a Mader .  She completed our Whole Foods grant and sent it off over the winter break.  Now, we just need to keep our fingers crossed.

Please come out and join us for our work day this month and if you have any interesting containers laying around the house that could be used to pot succulents, please let me know.  See the Upcoming Events page and the Help our Garden Grow page for more information.

Hello everyone,

I have lots to report this month, but before I wade into the garden news, I'd like to acknowledge the phenomenal Madera community.  Our garden is not just a school garden, it is truly a community garden.  Lots of times kids ask me if it is my garden, and I have to laugh because there is no way our garden would be quite so awesome if it weren't for the hard work and imagination of many people.  So, to the following folks, you have my utmost gratitude.  We wouldn't have a garden without you.

First of all, I'd like to give a "shout-out" to the newly formed Dad's Club.  I think you guys are the next best thing to sliced bread.  I said I needed mulch moved and the next thing I know I've got five guys hustling around on a beautiful Thursday after school.  While I told the kids that it was the garden gnomes, the real credit goes to: Paul, Bill, Rodney, Jeff, and Scott.  Thank you!  Then, I said the garden needed some holiday illumination, and once again it was Dad's Club to the rescue.  The Club donated 7 strands of lights!!!

As of 12/2, we had 19 strands of solar-powered lights that had been donated to the garden!  Way to go, Madera!  Thanks to: the Gager family; Stephanie, John, and Matthew McGovern; the Arechiga-Rubenaker family; Ms. McCormick's PM Kindergarten class; the Reed family; Otto and Jeannie from Room 6; Nerissa, Ayo, and Zephyr; the Dad's Club; Deborah, Lawrence, and George, and a few anonymous donors.  These lights will be going up next week so that they will be up in time for the Madera Sing event.  If you wanted to participate, but just haven't gotten around to it, please drop off your lights in the office this next week.

I'd also like to sincerely thank some of the folks who have willingly shared their expertise with the garden.  Rodney Austin repaired our arched garden entrance.  It has been hanging out at an odd-angle for over a year and a half and in one weekend he straightened it out.  Now it looks like a proper entrance.  Brian Whyte, a local landscaper, gave me wonderful advice on what to plant on the hillside next to the school wing, and he helped us to get a 20% discount with The Watershed Nursery.  Kyle, a resident 4th grader and lunch time regular has helped immensely with assembling our garden signs.  Thanks everyone!

So, what else has been happening with the garden?  Well, we are not doing so well on grants- we didn't receive either the PG&E grant or the National PTA grant.  We are sending out our Whole Foods Grant next week, so let's keep our fingers crossed.  We are still managing to find ways to make great garden programming happen though.  To that end, here are some of our November highlights:
~ We have started making signs for the garden.  Our after school garden club meets on Thursdays and we bust out the paints.  The kids are doing a great job, and slowly more and more of our plants are being identified.
~The kids just finished up planting natives on the hillside next to the newish school wing.  We planted native strawberries, thimbleberries, coyote mint, currants, sticky cinquefoil, elderberry, and cow parnsip just to name a few.  This was a tough job because the soil on this hillside can't really be called soil (especially after the big trench that was dug there this summer- it is really just more a collection of big rocks.)  The students persevered and with the help of a pick axe and some shovels we got some holes dug.  We planted species that like the shade, will stay small, and that provide food to either us or to our garden friends.  Also, these plants will hopefully help to keep this hillside from eroding.
~We have also planted a huge amount of winter edibles such as garlic, onions, potatoes, lettuce, kale, chard, collard greens, bok choy,  mustard, beets, turnips, peas, spinach, cauliflower, and broccoli.
~While there hasn't been quite as much to harvest at this time of year, students have been taking home kale, lemons, figs, and seed packets so that they can start their own gardens at home.
~We are starting to wrap-up the first semester of garden classes.  All grades have been studying the senses, and have recently begun to explore how to use their ears to gather information about the world around them. Kindergarteners are learning how to listen the the garden by playing fun matching games.  First graders are making sound poems for the garden and have learned about the great literary term, Onomatopoeia.  Second graders have created great sound effects for a short story using items from the garden.  These classes will end at Winter Break, and new classes will begin with me in February.
~Ms. Best and I still working out the details, but it looks like her 4th/5th combination class is going to be doing yoga with me in the garden twice a week during the month of January.  I am so excited!!!!  Does anyone have any ideas about what we might be able to use for cheap, durable, outdoor yoga mats?

The last thought I'd like to leave you with is the value of childhood whimsy.  I get to experience this gift pretty regularly, and I feel soo lucky because it reminds me of all that is special and silly about our world.  I often have kids tell me stories that my adult mind wants to discard as absolute rubbish such as the dragon that lives in some of our garden shrubbery, or the parrot that often hangs out in our trees.  Or sometimes I have kids propose ideas that my adult mind says just won't work- like building teepees on a windy hillside.  But I listen and let it all happen because that is what I think being a kid should be about.  And sometimes we do really silly things in the garden just because it is a beautiful day and the wind is singing a certain song.  It is this sense of promise and excitement that I wanted to nurture by lighting up our garden for the holidays.  There is a bit of childhood magic in seeing colorful lights on a cold, dark, winter night.  I hope our garden can always grow this kind of whimsy.....

Happy Holidays!

Hello all,

We are trying something new and exciting this year, and we need your help.  We want to inspire a little of that holiday spirit by decorating the school garden with solar-powered holiday lights.  Here is everything you need to know:

What?
Purchase a strand of solar-powered holiday lights while you are doing your regular holiday shopping.  These typically costs around $15-$30 a strand and will be used by the school for many years to come.  We are trying to get 20 strands of lights donated. 

Why?
The real reason why we are doing this is because the kids will love it.  The lunch time kids have been pushing for holiday decorations in the garden for awhile now, and we have decided that it is time to get moving on this request.  It will increase the garden's aesthetic value, the neighbors will enjoy it, and maybe it will help your family start a new tradition of walking, biking, or driving around the neighborhood to look at holiday lights.

When?
This needs to happen relatively quickly.  We need all of the lights by Friday, December 2nd so that we can have them up by the 6th (the evening of the winter sing.)  The lights will remain up through the winter break and then taken down and stored for the coming years.

Where?
Target has a couple different varieties of solar-powered lights, both in the stores in Albany and Richmond, and online.  To look at what they offer, click here.

Home Depot has a couple different types.  To look at what they offer, click here.

Amazon.com has a couple different types.  To look at what they offer, click here.

Sears has some different types as well.  Sears ships, or you can pick them up in the store (which means that you don't pay shipping but you are assured the item is in stock.)  To look at what they offer, click here.
If you purchase online, you can have your lights shipped to the school: 8500 Madera Drive El Cerrito Ca 94530.  If you purchase them at the actual stores, you can can just drop them off in the office.  Please make sure you include some kind of note that lets us know what family the lights are from.  We want to thank all of the families who help with this fun project!


Please remember- these must be solar-powered lights.  We have no way of plugging them in and even if we could, we like the idea of using the sun's energy to fuel our winter whimsy.  Other types of winter holiday decorations are welcome also, as long as they don't need to be plugged in and they don't break easily (no glass ornaments please!)

If you have any questions, please contact me via the contact page on the website, put a note in my box at school or email me directly.

Thanks so much for helping to make our kid's dreams come true!

Greetings and happy November to everyone.  As I sit at my desk and think back over the last month in the garden, I am amazed by how much we got done.  And by we, I mostly mean students.  Our kids hustled at lunch, after school and during class time to get our garden ready for winter.  If you haven't been by the garden lately, you might not have noticed that all of our summer crops (tomatoes, squash, cucumbers, beans, etc.) have been removed.  After getting all of these plants out of the ground, students added compost and mixed it into the soil.  Next up we planted seedlings- lettuce, chard, kale, collards, bok choy, broccoli, cauliflower, onions, and spinach- whew!  What a list!  Starting this next week, we will be planting more onions, potatoes, and other seeds.  Way to go student farmers!

We also had our big pines removed this month, and I think everyone was unprepared for what a difference this was going to make in our garden. It is so much sunnier and open in the upper garden!  Thanks to Jim, the acting grounds supervisor for the district and to the Fahy Tree Service for making this such a painless experience.  Jim quickly responded to all of my phone calls (even on Saturdays) and the guys with the tree service made sure they protected all of our plants.  They even cut a bunch of great stumps for us, left us with a pile of mulch, and they carved a cute, smiley face into a stump.  Thank you.  Take a look at the Seasonal Garden Photos page to see some of the gifts they left.

I would also like to thank all of the folks who volunteer time or donate items to our garden.  This last month we had hoses, birdseed, and soap donated.  We also have a couple of Madera parents who are putting in some extra time trying to secure grants- thanks to Apple Szostak and Jen Loughrey for helping with this process.  Please look at our Help our Garden Grow page if you'd like to help us out.

Last, I would like to leave you with some thoughts around cultivating compassion.  Over my years working with children, I have always been amazed with their capacity for care.  They love things deeply whether the thing be a doll, dog, hobby, or parent.  Over the past two and half years, I have had the pleasure of watching our students begin to care about our garden and I have determined that the first step is usually just becoming aware of all that surrounds them.  This is why we spend so much time using our senses to experience the garden.  We look, listen, smell, touch, and taste our way through the seasons so that students can develop a first-hand understanding of how things work in our plot of land.  Once they have tasted mint, or spied on a spider making its web, or stuck their nose in the soil, it is much harder to ignore the wonder around them.  And once they start really seeing and knowing, they easily become avid caretakers. 

We have student farmers who routinely fill bird feeders and clean out the bird bath.  Other students take care of our worm farm and even go to the trouble to "air-lift" worms from precarious situations (like being on the asphalt) to shady spots of soil.  If I ever accidentally step on plant when I am showing kids around the garden, they are very quick to point it out.  And when we review the rules, many classes could take all day to talk about all of the ways we need to be careful with the plants in the garden. 

My favorite example of childhood compassion happened this month with a kindergarten class.  A little boy came up to me and it was obvious he was quite distraught over something.  He tugged on my sweatshirt and reported that he thought one of trees was quite ill.  Impressed with his potential botanical knowledge, I looked at the tree in question and tried to figure out why he thought it was ill.  Were the leaves browned?  Was it wilted?  I couldn't figure it out, so I asked him.  He pointed next to the tree where there was a thermometer on the ground and gravely told me that the tree had a temperature.  Obviously, he associated thermometers with being sick, and as a result was quite concerned for the health of our tree.  I commended him on his eyes and his vocabulary and then I spent some time reassuring him that our blood orange tree was quite healthy.

As a society we often talk about ignorance as being the root of much wrong such as hatred, evil, etc.  But, we don't often consider the inverse of that statement- that knowing and understanding can be the root of much that is good and compassionate.  Let's be thoughtful about what we teach our children, and about what knowledge we prize.  What do we really want our kids to know and care about?