Last meeting... new salads, peppers and tomatoes seeded!

Well, we're going to get back on schedule with our blog posting soon, I promise. Until then, please accept my report on the last club meeting, this past Thursday, approx. one week late.

We planted a ridiculous amount of new stuff, while a few of my chemistry students got service learning hours for helping me spread more of the composted horse manure. In total, probably about 400 different salads, greens, tomatoes and pepper embryos all got to rest in a warm, wet bed of soil. Hard to imagine that they start no bigger than a peppercorn and end up producing so much food when mature.







If you're like me, you're probably thinking "hey, four hundred is a lot, especially since this only covers about 1/6th of the varieties that you planned to grow this year!" Well hey, we want to be safe, and make sure at least some of it makes it to our tables a couple months from now! If we have extra transplants in need of a home by the time late April rolls around, we can give away or sell some of them and raise some more money for the club.

I'll send you some pics of the wonderful progress we made yesterday in just a few days...

best,
Mr. Mikulski

Busy without me... =)

Yesterday the vegetable garden club met up and, I am very happy to report that the four members that showed did an awesome job of taking care of business without being told how or what to do. You see, I needed to go out to the plot to find more rocks and mow the tall stuff leftover from last year. While I was outside with a few volunteers, these four ladies of the veggie garden team took care of three things:

1) mini-potting the rest of the garlic
2) deciding on a watering schedule
3) writing a rough-draft thank you letter to a recent donor

Here's some pics of how tall the previously mini-potted garlics already are, and how much our cabbage has grown:




Hard to imagine in about 2 1/2 more months that these little plants will be a huge, dense ball of sweet nutritious deliciousness!

Speaking about donors, I think we've decided how to use SGA Youth & Family Service's donation -- they will provide us with the potting soil and fertilizer we'll need for our garden. Our more recent donation, which came from a local church, will probably be used to purchase two more water storage containers and to buy the supplies needed to build a total of FOUR rain catchment structures.

I was so excited thinking about the future of our garden, that I took a few minutes of time after school to plant some seeds myself:



We've been getting used 36-er egg cartons from Uncle Mike's on Grand, so these days its easy to start up a batch of pretty much anything on a whim! Although you can't see it, what will sprout from these little compartments is mustard greens, spinach and a baby lettucs mix. Mmmm!

Soon, we'll get a student member back on track with making the posts here... you see, right now there are so many new clubs, sports and other activities, that I'm having to rope the members outside of our core 5 or 6 in one by one...

-- Mr. M

Special Project #1 -- clean up the lot!

So we had some students from outside the veggie garden club come in to help us with the first of our three special projects -- Cleaning up the trash, branches and rocks from the site. We thank them for this, but in the end they will also be getting some Service Learning hours for their help (so we thank them in a most appropriate sort of way ;).

The other two special projects that we've planned outside help for are spreading the organic fertilizer (two weeks from now) and building the rain catchment systems (four weeks from now). Here are some photos from day one of the cleanup:








It wasn't too bad, as the weather was warm (but windy). It was fun to meet some new students, and to get something else accomplished! Tomorrow we'll work the perimeter and remove more of the 'eyesore' type trash that is less of a problem for the tiller but more of a problem for looks...

Our meeting on March 1st (getting close to direct-seeding time!)

Hey everyone,

So usually Latezia (one of our student members) is the one making the posts to the blog; however, on Thursday, during our meeting, she informed me that her home internet access was a bit shaky at the moment. So I offered to post the pics from our activities in her stead.

We got a few things accomplished. #1, we potted garlic that had started shooting and rooting into paper cups.

#2, we prepared the wood crates that will be our produce 'boxes' when the season starts.


#3, we finished designing the flyer that students will use to try and recruit ten more members from the community. #4, we figued out that Google Groups stinks at trying to create email groups, and decided to swith to Yahoo Groups. If you get an email from Yahoo Groups, that means you're on our mailing list!

- Matt

Our fourth meeting...

Hey everyone,

Most of our student members are seniors, and they were taking an AP test last Thursday (I think it was the Biology test). I hope they did well. One of the senior members did make it down -- Jarquise McComb -- and, together with a friend tagging along, got some garlic I had leftover from last year's farm share started in a water bath.

It was her idea to try the garlic both ways -- half with their husk still on, the other half peeled. I checked in on them today and they're sprouting and growing roots:



It looked like a few with the husks were trying to get moldy; these I moved to another tray. Hopefully Jarquise can use the results of her little experiment to figure out what the safest way to start garlic bulbs is!

Sophomores and junior members were curiously absent -- but this was the first week that I didn't go on the intercom to remind students, instead sending them messages from the day before to their phones.

Meeting # 3

We started meeting # 3 with a little trouble as we noticed our plants not getting enough light... Even though they are beginning to sprout beautifully we had to get a little more light on them..

Here you see Mr. Mikulski using his super strength

We used string & knot tying to lower our lights enough to hit the plants just a little bit more.

And here are the babies

As you can see, the left side of the Mammoth Cabbage were the only side with availability to sprout because of the high light setting we once had.

Despite our minor problem, we all enjoyed looking at a new machine that was going to help us make a miraculous garden!

The feeling of planning was new to us as we sorted through planning schedules & layouts for our garden.

We're almost ready to put it into action!

Until next time :)

The Second Meeting in 2012

Today was an wonderful gathering at the Phillips Veggie Club as new faces and new plants took order. We was able to get a great start on new vegetables.

Cabbage , Cauliflower, and Broccoli are just a few things to name to what we are starting to plant this wonderful season. It was great to see our instructors face as he reiterated how to start the soil for the plants.

Hands were messy and fingernails were dirty as members

crumble the dirt chunks for the soil! HOORRRAAYYY!!!

Finally it was time to make places for the seeds!

Poke! Poke!

Our meeting resulted in at least 2 egg cartons of each veggie: Cabbage , Cauliflower, and Broccoli!

The other members and I are so ready for more!!!