Giving at Graduation

Our garden is overflowing with produce and we are so lucky to be doing so well! The students have been working tirelessly and their hard work really shows! Below is a video walkthrough of the garden prior to our big harvests.

We had an amazing graduation ceremony yesterday for our NJ class of 2017 and it was so awesome to see all the grads and all the hard work they put in to get where they are now.

We have been so lucky with our garden and the amount of produce we've been getting out of it so we decided to invite all the graduates, their friends and families as well as our special guests to come check out the garden and cut some lettuce, bok choy, spinach, kale and onions to take home.  Even after everyone came through and cut what they wanted we still had tons left over so some students have volunteered to come in to help pot up some lettuce plants and harvest more kale, spinach and strawberries (thank you!!!). We made some salad bowls with different kinds of lettuce and kept some of the lettuce as single plants in pots for people to take home and plant in their gardens.  Everything is so colourful and looks so beautiful.

a look at the lettuce harvest for today.  Sending lots of
this home with students and staff to plant in their
gardens at home.

A look at the two "salad bowls" we created with four
different varieties of lettuce.  They look so
colourful and tasty!

One of the ruby red lettuce plants potted
and ready to be transplanted in
someone's home garden.

Our bins of spinach and kale harvested from the garden today.
These will all be washed and frozen by our wonderful Foods
teacher and will be used in all sorts of foods for the students
in the fall.

We are so excited that there is still so much more to harvest from the garden.  We will be completing our harvest this week and next and plan to reseed with vegetables that have about 60-80 day harvest lengths so that when the students come back in September they will have lots of tasty vegetables ready to harvest!

Happy gardening! 

Seeds!

Another huge thank you goes out to Chris Shaeen from the Metro in Blackburn Hamlet for donating seeds to our garden program 2 years in a row! 

The seeds that Chris has donated the last two years have led to all of our wonderful produce from the gardens.  Here is this year's donation ...

Thank you so much for your generous donation Chris! We can't wait to get these seeds in the ground!

Happy gardening!

Irrigation System

Irrigation over the summer is a big hurdle to overcome for schools.  However, with a grant from Whole Kids Foundation we were able to set up a pretty awesome irrigation system that can be controlled from home! 

This irrigation system is SO cool! We have it set up with soaker hoses and sprinklers that can be turned on and off from a smartphone, anywhere.  This will be extremely helpful over the summer months when all the students are gone from school and we're waiting until September to harvest!  

We will of course go over to the school once a week or more to harvest food from the garden to freeze and to pick weeds (weeds never rest)!

Happy gardening!

Huge Harvests!

We have been having huge harvests from the garden daily! 

We've had peas, lettuce (different varieties), kale, spinach, bok choy and LOTS of strawberries!

a look at the big gardens

more bok choy ready to harvest!

bok choy and turnips 

the onion bed is
growing so well

Happy gardening!

Thank You Very Mulch!

Thank you SO much to Gina from the Orleans Community Gardens for her amazing donation of mulch to the NJ student gardens!  We got a trailer full of wonderful mulch and we are looking forward to spreading it in the garden beds this week! It'll provide lots of help with water retention in the beds and will also help to keep the weeds away! 

There are so many incredible things going on at the Orleans Community Gardens.  They do weekly donations to the Ottawa Food Bank and have also got into the beekeeping business!  So much knowledge and so many kind people. 

The amazing community gardens run by Gina!
Found at 3352 St. Joseph Blvd and also
on Facebook!

The mountain of mulch that we picked from (with a shot of the
beehives in the background - what amazing work they're doing over
at the Orleans Community Gardens!

Our haul of mulch! 

A before and after shot of our Indigenous Healing Garden without mulch and
then the beautiful finished version with mulch! Our sage, sweetgrass,
tobacco and cedar will now be able to grow weed free! 

Thanks so mulch Gina!

Happy gardening!!

Garden growing update

Just a quick post to show you some photos of how our garden is growing!

Another view of the bed!

Strawberries are
starting to ripen!

Our ruby lettuce blend

Spinach

Turnips and bok choy

Peas

Beets

Thanks for checking out our post,

Happy gardening!

Transplanting and Harvesting!

We spent this week transplanting out the rest of our seedlings that we had started under the grow lights in the classroom.  This included tomatoes, marigolds, kale, lettuce, cucumbers, spaghetti squash, gourds, bok choy, and our herbs (parsley, arugula, dill, thyme, rosemary, oregano, chives).

Some lettuce that has been transplanted
into the garden (as well as some that
was direct sowed)! We're so impressed
with how well the garden is growing!

Tomatoes, marigolds and red leaf lettuce
transplanted into the garden!

We were also fortunate enough to have our first big harvest! The students were so excited to see all of their hard work pay off in the form of wonderfully crisp and tasty radishes! The foods class was excited to try different recipes with the radishes including roasted radishes, fresh raw radishes with hummus as well as a salad with radish greens!  

This is a quick view of our radishes from seed to harvest!

Students have been working really hard on finishing up the irrigation system for the garden as well as creating signs for their gardens.  We're hoping to get it all done for the arts/music/gardening showcase this Friday (16th) at 12:30pm. Will give more updates this week!

Happy gardening!