Wake up with lemon, coffee, and . . . WORMS!

On Thursday, we spiced up our garden by adding some acidity in the form of lemon rinds and coffee grounds. The acidity is good for the health of the soil, and the lemon can help to keep pests out of our plants! We also aerated and watered our soil, and once it looked like it should after a decent rain, we dropped in some Canadian Nightcrawlers! They will help to further aerate the soil and allow water to refresh the roots of our plants. Next week, we might try making Lemon Rind Seedling Planters. 

Will, Amelia,  and Tony slip some worms into our terracotta pots. Tony's tried to wriggle away!

Faith gives our plants a little caffeinated pick-me-up as Braelynn searches for bugs

Braelynn caught another cricket in the butterfly garden! We saw another elusive Monarch and two Clouded Sulpher (one fuzzy one in the close-up) butterflies. The Heartleaf is starting to bear some beautiful orange flowers!

The hastas got a little more care and water. We are trying to figure out if the leaves are being nibbled on by rabbits, scorched by the sun, or a little bit of both. Either way, we are on the case! We left the garden with some banana peppers, bell peppers, basil, and lavender in hand. 

Hardy hastas and dazzling designs

As a gardening club, we nurture the plants in our garden, but we also want to spruce up, care for, and beautify the other plants on our campus! On Tuesday, we weeded and watered our hasta plants, hoping to make them bear more luscious green leaves and purple blossoms. 

Thank you for your hard work, hasta crew! (Faith, Amelia, Will, and Kaydence)

We noticed that fortifying our pepper plants with eggshells really did the trick! We should be able to harvest some later this week. Our latest additions to the garden are two purple Aster flowers, representing our school colors! You will also see a new design with the painted rocks spelling out our school name. 

Samuel plants our purple Aster flowers             Kaydence adds more eggshells to our pepper plants

It is a little hard to spot our green letters, but they are easier to see in person, we promise!

Thank you, Erica & Angelina, for painting the rocks!

We have new green bell peppers and banana peppers!

We plucked our basil flowers to keep the herbs fresh.

In the butterfly garden, we spotted a monarch (unfortunately, it was too busy to pose for a picture) and some new lilies. We also worked to rejuvenate our butterfly bush and wild roses. Finally, we decorated the windows with paper butterflies made from the colors that live butterflies are most attracted to! We also threw in a colorful butterfly mobile for good luck. 

Amelia displays her purple butterfly

The wild rose we hope to revive

Butterfly spotting continues!

Yesterday we saw a couple of increases: more gardeners joined our club, more leaves adorned our plants, and we spotted three monarchs! To care for our plants, we used toothpicks to aerate the soil and crushed up eggshells to add calcium to our pepper and tomato plants. We watered and created some more decorations for the border of our garden. 

Our gardeners: Alana, Will, Erica, Kaydence, Samuel, Alessandro, and Xavier

Once we headed over to the butterfly garden, we pulled some weeds, watched the flight of the monarchs, read some books, and brainstormed ideas for a butterfly feeder--our next project. Thank you, gardeners! Your hard work is paying off.  We have several green tomatoes and new peppers ready for harvesting soon!

Can you spot the monarchs?  (2/3 captured in flight)

Thank you, Erica! That was a huge thistle weed.😅

Will represents Gardening Club, and Alessandro sets up a daisy grow pod.  

Thank you, Orquiola family for your donation!

Future scientists? We could see it!

Today was very productive! We welcomed three new members as we watered, replenished, and tended to our plants. We also brainstormed ways to welcome ladybugs and worms to our garden. It is possible that we have some future entomologists in the CLCS Gardening Club! Their knowledge of insects is quite impressive.

Welcome, Tony, Braelynn, and Alessandro!
Thank you to the Bodnar family for their donation of potting soil. 

When we moved over to the butterfly garden to pull weeds, we discovered two monarchs were waiting for us! This made us think that we should come up with a creative plan to build butterfly feeders, Mark Rober style.

"Mony" the Monarch

Braelynn and her cricket

 The students even caught a cricket! If you are considering coming to Reading in the Garden or if you are in need of a book for the summer, check out these recommendations from our gardeners.

These books are available via the bin outside of the Purple Kiva entrance.

Labeling our plants, showing school spirit

Last week we denoted all the Latin species names of our plants and created labels for each one! It sounds fancy, but all of this was done the old-fashioned way, with pencil, notecards, Scotch tape, and toothpicks.

Well done, Faith!

Our featured artists are Angelina and Erica. 

Thank you to the Lia family for their donation of "Ellen" the peppermint plant.

We also painted rocks to spell out CLCS in our Coyote colors. These rocks will decorate the border of our garden. Of course, maintenance of the garden is our first priority. We watered the plants and treated them with diluted fish oil fertilizer and Epsom salts, both to add nutrients to the soil and to ward off pests. So far, our plants seem to be resilient against both insects and rabbits. We only have a few nibbles on our sage plant. We also filled in the topsoil on several of our plants because some of it had washed away after a hard rain. After our work was done, everyone walked away with a sprig of lavender or a flower, as well as a sweet banana pepper. Erica and I then weeded the butterfly garden outside of Purple Kiva.  While doing so, we spotted a monarch butterfly! Hopefully, we will see more soon.

Our school has a garden!

I am very pleased to announce that Cambridge Lakes Charter School was awarded a mini-grant from the Jane Goodall Roots & Shoots Foundation! The grant proposal was originally drafted by our 2018-2019 6th graders who are now entering 8th grade. With this grant money, we were able to start our very own terracotta garden. We are currently growing tomatoes, potatoes, peppers, rosemary, basil, sage, lemon thyme, Greek oregano, lavender, peppermint, marigolds, and angelonia. Our garden is located next to the preschool and kindergarten playground, outside of the school library (Red Kiva link).

For the remainder of the summer, I will be hosting Gardening Club on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 1:00-2:00 pm.  On Tuesdays and Thursdays from 2:00-3:00 pm, students are welcome to attend Reading in the Garden outside Purple Kiva. During this time, students can read in the grassy area near the benches and wildflowers. Borrow a book from our bins or bring one of your own to enjoy!

We are currently accepting donations for our school garden. If you are able to donate pavers, soil, plants, seeds, pots, shepherd's hooks, burlap sacks, or anything else you can think of that would help us to expand our operation, it would be greatly appreciated! Eventually, we will work to create garden beds in order to grow potatoes, tomatoes, onions, and more. Drop off for donations is located outside of Purple Kiva from 2:00-3:00 pm on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Gardening Club and Reading in the Garden will continue to operate (with a new schedule, of course) throughout the school year.  Thank you in advance for supporting this venture!

*If your child would like to participate in Gardening Club, please have them arrive promptly at the Purple Kiva entrance at 1:00 pm. There is outdoor access to the garden if one walks around the periphery of Green Kiva toward Purple. If your child would like to participate in Reading in the Garden, they can simply join us outside Purple at 2:00 pm. We ask that gardeners and readers bring a mask "just in case" we cannot practice social distancing while we are outside, and because we may cut through the building briefly to access the garden.