Monarchs in our Garden!

I went outside to water the school garden today and what should I see? Almost a dozen monarch caterpillars eating milkweed leaves!  They are big and look awesome!  I also saw a Monarch butterfly flitting about the plants.  Maybe she was looking for a place to lay some eggs!

Harvest Festival, Monday, October 23rd 2017!

Gardening with Kindergarteners!

With the growing success of our school garden, this year we are beginning something new!  One of my missions has always been to get more students into and using the garden. After spending the day last fall at PS 216, an Edible Schoolyard demonstration school, I thought the Edible Schoolyard curriculum would be an exciting program for our school!

First we used four of our senses to explore the garden.  The classes drew a picture of something they saw, smelled, felt and heard in the garden.

Some of the classes noticed the plants in the garden are starting
to look a little wilted!

The next time we went out to the garden, we learned about the different tools that we use to help keep the garden healthy!

The cultivator or claw helps loosen the soil.

Watering cans help us water all parts of the garden!

When using the rake, we have to be careful. 
They are big!

Placing the leaves in the wheelbarrow
so we can bring them over to the compost bin.

Most recently, we have been talking about harvesting vegetables from our garden.  How do we know if something is ripe or not?  Why would we weight our vegetables?  We made different combinations on the balance scales to see which vegetables were heavy and which vegetables were light.

Wilma Jean Garden Fundraiser Monday, February 6th!

Some of the 2nd graders made cards of their favorite fruit or vegetable to be shown at Wilma Jean tomorrow!  50% of the proceeds on Monday night will go towards the PS58 garden!  Go support our garden and have a fabulous meal! See you there!

Look at PS58's Garden Grow!

Thank you to all the families that helped take care of our school garden this summer!  It was a hot summer and our garden needed a lot of watering!

Our tomatoes and peppers are still growing!  Our herbs look fabulous and green!  We even have some onions!

We have some plum tomatoes growing!

Our nasturtiums are on their second round of growth!

Still growing!

Lots of cherry tomatoes!

A green pepper!

We have lots of mint growing.

Our lavender is thriving!

The squirrels don't seem to be interested in the onions.

Basil for our cafeteria! 

Parsley and more parsley!

Fun at the Harvest Festival!

What a beautiful afternoon for the Harvest Festival!  We harvested basil, cabbage, thyme, scallions, red onions even a few green tomatoes, eggplants beets to be used for lunch this week!  We planted some kale, cabbage and mums as well as readied the rest of the garden for winter! 

Making leaf headbands!

Cleaning out the garden beds.

Getting herbs for sachels.

Cutting lavendar.

Planting kale.

Harvested herbs and cabbage for PS58 lunches!

Thank you Brogan Ganley for sharing some of your photographs!