1/3 planted!

Today, with the help of both a new high school member (Jasmine) and our two best elementary school helpers (Melvin and Torrence) we got all of our plants that are ready for going outside into the soil. That makes about 33% of our total area planted... looking good, looking good :)

[pictures unavailable for download]

Sorry that the pics are not working -- it seems that the SD card on my phone is on the fritz... just imagine six people working at the garden on a beautiful spring day :) On the plus side, it looks like a new addition to the club might be interested in posting to our garden blog after each meeting. Cross your fingers and hope it's true, and we'll see on Thursday eve if it pans out...

Also, our rain catching system is about 80% functional; we caught about 100 gallons of rain during the sprinkling on Monday.

Please continue to keep in touch with us as the vegetation grows to impressive proportions! And, if you have any time, we are open to community volunteers on Tues. and Thursday, from 3:30 to 5:00 PM. 3733 S. Giles. Come on out, and get your hands dirty :) Remember, the first week of June is our first produce date...

all the best,
Mr. Mikulski

Focus on the good... of which there is plenty

Doro's advice to me... so I will only mention (and not bemoan about) how our plan to get some heirloom tomato seedlings fell through.

Over the last week or so, we were fortunate to get some support from two farms offering food shares to the city -- Nichol's Farm and Angelic Organics. Both were extremely generous in helping us obtain more seedlings to supplement what we already had (special thanks to Chris and Todd). Our garden by Wendell Phillips H.S. is looking more and more like a food plot! We've got most of Todd's seedlings in the ground, and we still have several flats left of the orphan seedlings donated by Chris's workplace to put outside.

Here are some pics from last week Friday, the day that I tried to finish the last changes to the rain catchment to make it FINALLY functional:

And some more from yesterday (Saturday): (NOTE: these look nicer since it was brighter outside, plus the guest photo shooter probably had a better lens in his phone/camera, and it looks like he added some fun effects, too)

You may be asking, who are all these young-uns? Well, our club might have its first elementary school members ever; these young people volunteered to help out on both days, and were extremely polite, generous and well-listening helpers. They live and go to school steps away from the garden, sure, but to openly offer help and companionship for several hours at a time... and for days in a row? They even brought us all out some pink lemonade after we had been working for a couple of hours on Saturday... how swell was that?

Not captured in the photos were the two adult helpers that joined us -- special thanks to Ms. Smith from down the street and Alexei, my friend who took a break from his med school studies to move some dirt around!

Although things did get accomplished (mostly, the compost has AT LONG LAST all been spread), I was disappointed that we couldn't get into my school. There are many more seedlings to set out, and I have much earth-turning still to do with the newly fixed rototiller. Alas, I will limit my recounting of disappointment to two sentences, and two sentences only!

Until next time, ya'll  =)

P.S. -- we hope to be getting back our student blog poster, Ms. Coleman, soon... so look for her postings in the coming weeks!

And thricely the good news cometh!

(don't ruin it for me; I KNOW thricely is not a word :)

Firstly discovered of the good news:  our old farm share provider, Nichols Farm of Mantego, IL, was in town for the Garfield Park conservatory's garden fair on Saturday. I had just recently emailed them and another farm, Angelic Organics, to ask if there was any extra seedlings that we could buy from them to make up for what the rats ate. Serendipity! Todd Nichols invited me to see them at the conservatory, where they'd be selling some of their seedlings. He offered me a tremendously generous price, and all in all I was able to buy over 200 plants to help us catch up!

Secondly discovered -- there is an organic tomato grower down in Georgia that grew hundreds more seedlings than they will be able to plant this year. My mom found out about it from a neighbor who works at that garden. She's driving up in a week or two to spend time with her granddaughter (well, also with us, but Josie's the main attraction), and is offering to bring us several hundred of these tomato seedlings. Looks like the answer to plan-wrecking rats is the generosity and love that can come from people all around you!

Finally discovered was someone who has an engine that works as a replacement to the broken one on our tiller. All it took was a little bit of patience and helpful knowledge from the internet, and I got this wonderful machine back and running again!

I'll be out to finish the second and maybe the third of the four sections of our plot on Tuesday!!! Hooray!

Feeding MORE than just twenty families...

Those of you who have talked to me in more depth about our mission for the Wendell Phillips Vegetable Farm might already know that our #1 goal is to grow a full season's worth of vegetables for twenty local families. Well, something admittedly interesting is happening that is putting our plans into jeopardy! Something which has us feeding more than we had bargained for...

I direct the jury's attention to Exhibits A, B and C. Note the dug-up dirt within the trays (look closely if you don't initially see it) and the shells of seeds that can sometimes be found tossed about. Apparently there is one or more rats coming into my classroom at night and chowing down! We've lost peppers, eggplants, cucumbers, watermelons... it is really saddening, as we were already a little behind on most of these plantings!

I am starting some seeds at home beginning today, as a kind of "back-up"; in the meantime, I'll ask for your help again. If you know any plant stores offering great prices on either tomato or pepper seedlings, please email us at sciencekidsveggies@yahoo.com. We appear to be at war, and drastic times call for drastic measures...

The joy... and the pain

Hello everyone,

At our last club meeting and in the days that followed, we got a lot of things accomplished. New eggplant, summer squash, cucumbers, tomatoes, and peppers were all seeded out. We also put many new things into the garden outside -- transplanting more cabbage, leeks and onions. We also direct-seeded several fun things, including two types of carrots, two types of beets, and kale and swiss chard.

Special thanks to Ms. Selvie and the Hill sisters, who stayed late on Tuesday to get a lot done ("It's 6:07?!?!") as well as to Ms. Hubbard for coming today and Ms. Ebright and Mr. Capozzi for helping out, too!

Next meeting, we hope to paint some signs that we will put up around the garden to inform people of what we are doing (and to try to discourage littering in the adjacent areas). We cleaned up the entire lot and area around it as of a few weeks ago, but now that people are walking around more outside the litter is building up around the perimeter again and even blows into our plot! Grr!

Finally, the sad news. It appears that I have worked the Troy-Bilt tiller that I had acquired for fairly cheap to death (at least, a temporary leave). Stupid me, I should have paid more attention to the fact that small machine motors often go through motor oil at an extraordinary pace. Despite the fact that I just changed its oil one week prior, the unit had burnt up all the oil inside. Even though I replaced the oil that was missing, the damage was already done. Despite letting the motor running it on very low w/ the new oil for a bit, a loud grinding sound developed in the next hours. I expect that the next time I try to run it, I will either not be able to get it to start or it will have lost a lot of power, with any drive left in it to quickly deteriorate. Sigh...

I am planning to replace the motor (mounting a new one on), so if anyone has an old piece of yard equipment w/ a working motor but busted somethin'-else, or knows someone who does -- please email me at our club's external relations email -- sciencekidsveggies@yahoo.com

Until next time!

Sorry!

I just realized that my mis-posting of a classroom note to this blog sent an email out to all of you. Please ignore that; it was intended for my chemistry classes. Yes, I fixed it, and they got the message!

Before leaving for break... we break the earth!!!

So, Doro and I spent a long day last week Wednesday, and got the garden that much closer to being ready for direct seeding. Doro was a composted fertilizer-spreading machine, and I duct-taped the broken gear shifter on the tiller well enough that she'd stay in first, giving me enough control to start turning up some soil!




It was nice that a young boy from the neighborhood, Caleb I believe his name was, stopped by on his way home from school and tried to help us out for a bit:




I say 'tried' to help because shortly after appearing to be a good, hard worker, he was getting awfully distracted by things, and began to slow both Doro and I down. In my opinion, he ultimately ate more oranges that I brought for snacks than he earned. Well, at least he seemed to enjoy the experience :)




This all happened six days ago, before we took a short break to visit friends in Colorado. Today, I came out and, after fixing our gas-powered mower (yay!) cleaned the paths between the rows. Tomorrow I'll be tilling at 6-8 inches deep... wish me luck! After that, I might drop some imported soil on top as a final touch, and we'll be ready to start bringing our plants and seeds out...

Stay tuned!
Matt

PS -- I can't wait for spring break to be over, so our club members can rejoin in all this fun work that is involved with running a garden ;)