The Clintonville Kids Garden Club has been chugging along. So far we’ve talked a lot about weeding, seeding, and feeding as well as working with what you find at your site, including volunteer plants and the bounty they offer with minimal effort. Two weeks ago the kids harvested 3 pounds of potatoes from plants that came back from last year within the bounds of their garden. This week, we harvested seed from an overwintered cilantro plant. As we collect things, we discuss how we might sell them at our first market day – July 15th.
This week we had a pretty small group. The girls who were with me harvested a nice bunch of cucumbers. They had a snack at club and took a few home to share, maybe, with their families….
Here they are harvesting cilantro seed. We talked about how amazing it is that one little seed made this plant, which produced so many more seeds! We also talked about selling packets of these seeds and encouraging people to plant them now. It’s never too late to “seed” afterall!
After some weeding, feeding, and seeding (radish, beets, and squash), the girls and I made some line drawings of flowers we’ve been growing. We hope to get a little coloring book together to sell at our stand.
After a week away, it was good to be back home and at work. Sadly we had ZERO rain, but thanks to our irrigation system, we’re still growing strong.
Napa cabbage was ready for harvest and Father’s Day cole slaw.
We’re continuing to enjoy scallions from various sites around the farm.
Roots are starting to come in
We harvested about 20 pounds of potatoes, from volunteer plants!
The last of the radicchio came out of this bed which is now interplanted with with a heat tolerant Sparx Romaine, ginger, Red Russian kale that is still going strong.
Another bed where we’re trying intensive intercropping. Here shallots, basil, and tomatoes.
These winter sown onions are just about ready. (Wish we had about ten times more than we do!)
Peas making way for lima beans as winter sown carrots make way for more carrots.
This year we’re hosting the Clintonville Farmers’ Market Kids Garden Club. I’m excited to be working in the soil with kids–seeing what works with little hands and lots of little bodies and what doesn’t.
The club currently has 8 members and we’ve had two meetings so far. We’ll be meeting formally ever other week, with some informal meetups and effort by Cora and other kids from our CSA in between to keep things growing. I have made a pact with myself to not work in the garden without at least one child present aside from watering.
Here are a few highlights from this week’s session.
Upon arrival, all members, including our youngest age 4.5, sign themselves in. This small gesture is a first step in giving the kids ownership of their time in the garden.
As I was setting up and getting my head together for our time together, I thought about how to bring the kids who missed the session (5 of 8!) up to speed on what they missed. I pulled out a composition book and started a garden club log. We’ll use this to keep track of what we do each session and I’ll record anything that happens when they are not around in the journal to give them a sense of what’s happening when they aren’t around. Each week, during our welcome time, we’ll review what happened the previous session and the interim. Here’s an excerpt of what I wrote for Week 1. The next pages included lists of everything we planted: transplants, seeds, and the volunteers we found on the site.
After the review, we went over the days agenda which I’ve been writing on a white board.
I planned for us to weed and then label plants but the moment we stepped into the space I realized that was backwards. We sat back down and the kids enthusiastically made labels to mark the plants we already had in place. Then we went back inside the gate, reviewed some of the common weeds we found – grass, sorrel (which we tasted and left a bit around for future snacking, and ground ivy.
Weeding the potato patch.
We adopted a weed, seed, feed mantra for our work sessions. So, following some light weeding session, we spread compost and dug some fertilizer in around the tomatoes. We also planted a few seeds we hadn’t gotten in the ground the week before.
We ended the session with a scavenger hunt over the fence on the farm. The kids got to pick and taste a spectrum of things from sweet strawberries to spicy radishes. Not surprisingly, there were mixed reviews.
Over the Fence Urban Farm 