July garden update

Hi all, we hope you're enjoying the beautiful sunshine!

Just thought we'd put out a quick photo update on how our NJ garden is doing.

Our Indigenous Healing Garden is thriving! The sage
is growing so well (bottom) as well as the tobacco (upper right).
Throughout the garden are ornamental gourds (or at least that's
what we think they are)? We didn't plant these ones but thought
we'd let them grow to see what we get!

There is so much growing in our garden and we are so thrilled at how well it's been going!   

A collage shot of all the wonderful things growing in the garden!
From top left across we have: tomatoes, potatoes and spaghetti squash
all flowering, swiss chard (neon lights), beets, celery, kale, zucchini
and mustard greens.

Our blueberries (left) and raspberries (right) are just

about ready to be harvested and frozen! These will

go so well in smoothies for the students next school year.

Throughout the summer we have some dedicated volunteers that will be heading to the school to check on the garden and harvest any vegetables that are ready.  These volunteers have agreed to blanch and freeze the produce for the students to have in the fall.  

With the guidance and expertise of our absolutely amazing and innovative Foods teacher, Mark Frankish, the foods classes generally prepare meals for the whole school on a daily basis.   Having this extra produce on hand not only saves our small school money in grocery shopping but more importantly, engages our at risk youth.  This produce has been planted, cared for, harvested and cooked by our Norman Johnston students and this process teaches our students such valuable lessons in regards to sustainability, food security, and food preparation.

We had some student and teacher volunteers in after school
finished to help harvest, blanch and freeze even more produce
from the garden (kale, spinach, strawberries, mustard greens).
- see picture below
After the harvest they replanted the garden with more crops that
will be ready to harvest just in time for classes to start in September
(this way there is less to worry about harvesting throughout the summer).
- see picture above

Thanks for checking out our blog! We will update you in a couple of weeks when we harvest our beets (we will blanch and freeze the roots and the greens) and also when our new seeds begin to grow!

Happy gardening :)