OC Organic Garden Blog

#1 caterpillar eggs on Milkweed leaf

Monarch egg closeup

#2 caterpillar emerges from egg/burrow

Mrs. Aarvig’s second grade class enjoyed a harvest party in the garden!

The children harvested their own multi-colored carrots, cleaned and peeled them, and ate the delicious carrots with ranch dressing.

These sweet carrots they planted from seed in October, watered, weeded around them, fed with compost “tea” from the worm castings, and watched them grow for four months.

by Mia Noel Rose E. DiLalla

On Thursday, January 30th, my class, Mrs. Toohey’s fourth grade, had their day in the garden. I was assigned to be a maintainer. This is the first time I have been assigned this task. As a maintainer, you have to pull up weeds and throw them away. We also have to pick up dead leaves and put them in the compost barrel with the grubs.

I liked being a maintainer because I liked to use the hoe. With the hoe, I scraped up the weeds and tilled the garden soil. I even found a grub in the onion bed. I also used a shovel and dug up the roots of the weeds. I prefered to use the hoe over the shovel. I worked with John on the weeding of the onion bed. I was hot and sweaty but I really liked it. Adam’s grandparents helped us with supervising our maintaining chores. We worked great together.

By Justine Streichenberger
Garden Bucks are something that you earn when you are doing good work in the garden. The parents (Garden Masters) or our teachers give them to us when we work hard in the TMA garden. They are worth .50 cents at the Garden Sale on Tuesdays. I like to buy treats such as lemon pops at the Tuesday sales. You can also buy fresh lettuce, apple juice, cookies and treats. The ingredients come from the TMA garden and is grown and harvested by TMA students.

Green bucks are green with pictures of 3 broccoli and across the top is says Green Bucks. Next to the broccoli it has two money signs. My friend’s mom designed them. I love the idea of Green Bucks, it’s fun to earn them, it’s fun to spend them. Green buck for all.

Come learn things like this and so much more at the GM training workshop tomorrow, 1/14 from 8:15-10:30am. Refreshments and coffee served.

Sophie Ngeth showed Mrs. Cohen’s 2nd grade class how to grow green onions indefinitely! She chopped of the green parts of the onion and had the kids plant the roots-down into the soil. In just a few weeks the scallions regrew themselves to their original size. We’ll be able to continue to chop off the parts of onion we want to use and they will just continue to regrow and regrow.