School's out for the summer but the Garden still grows on!

Friday, May 7th was the official dedication of our drought tolerant "California friendly garden". It was also a night to celebrate receiving the Title One High Achieving School Award. We are very proud of both of these accomplishments so it was great to see friends and family come out to party! Thank you to all of you who came to celebrate! The sage is in full bloom and smells so fragrant. Our garden club student, Abby, noticed the first Matilija poppy in bloom. They remind Mrs. Sorvetti of a fried egg! Balloons adorned the school and flower pots were decorating the new tables and benches that have been installed, thanks to generous donations of time, effort and money from our students and staff. A delicious chicken dinner was available to those who wanted to eat at the dedication event. We had surprise visitors from the Inland Empire Utility Agency and the Chino Basin Water Conservation District who were very kind and honored us with beautiful plaques commemerating the garden. We also had a representative from Paul Biane's office to present us with a wonderful certificate and the Daily Bulletin was there to document the event in our local newspaper. The evening's festivities were enhanced with music supplied by a very entertaining DJ who kept all the kids up and hula-hooping and moving to her wonderful selections! Bert and Rocky's Ice cream even came and sold their ice cream favorites to anyone who wanted to finish off the evening on an even sweeter note! It was a nice evening for all of us.

The garden club is coming to an end for this year and we planted a few experimental seeds just to see what might happen. Mrs. Sorvetti will send updates during the summer and let everyone know if the garbanzo bean plants that we are growing produce any beans. We also stuck in some peanuts for fun, as well as amaranth seeds and quinoa hoping to see if the grains will grow as well as the wheat did. Tomatoes, eggplant, peppers, carrots, onions, and beets are all growing. The red curly leaf and freckles lettuce as well as the spinach were all a hit. The kids made salad roll-ups and hummus spread for pita bread from some of the fruits and veges we are learning about. It seemed that most of them really liked to make the recipes and then enjoy sharing and eating what they made. YUM!

For all who may be interested, the two chickens are grown up now but have yet to begin producing any eggs. I'll give them another month. The students were wonderful about watching and listening on the day they came to school to "visit" kindergarten and 1st grade. Afterwards the kids had lots of questions for me about how chickens grow. Lastly, they enjoyed feeding them their chick food out on the lawn. The chickens love to eat the dandelion weeds too, which helps with weed control. Mrs. Sorvetti added a new member to her family. Little Molly is a brown and white Border Collie/Australian Shepherd mix that we adopted from a shelter in Lucerne, she came to live with us in April. The students have been great "puppy sitters" while I tend to the needs of running the garden club. I'm sure that she will be in many of the garden pictures in the future. The photography club has been spotted taking pictures in and around the garden and we hope to post some of their pictures soon for all to see. The garden club students are also becoming very artistic in their watercolor renderings of native flowers that they have chosen to portray. Check back soon for updates and have a cool and wonderful summer. Happy gardening!

Thanks again to the 2010 5th graders for collecting recycling every week and donating the proceeds to our garden! The money we saved bought one more table and bench set.

Resting places in the garden and Blueberries - Yum!

Baldy View School Garden recieved a thoughtful donation of a beautiful concrete table and benches from Mrs. Tuazon, one of our playground supervisors. We have to find the perfect place for them so that everyone can take a load off their feet and enjoy the view! Please feel free to smell the flowers and have a nice rest in the garden next time you're there. Thanks Mrs. Tuazon!

We just heard the news that our school will receive 5 blueberry plants courtesy of the "US Highbush Blueberry Council"! They will be delivered from Oregon by mail during the next week. They are acid soil lovers, so we will have to hurry and ready the soil for them by amending it with peat moss. We hope that they will be planted on the next student assembly day so that all can welcome them into our garden. Yum!

Last week we pulled out our cotton plant as well as the eggplants, peppers, and tomatoes. They were looking sad after the frost got to them so we decided to take advantage of the nice cool whether and try some lettuce, spinach, brussel sprouts, carrots, beets and snap peas for a change. We planted the lupine and poppy plants in the new California Friendly garden, and put the peanut plants that we had started in pots into the ground in our vegetable garden. The garden club students decided to participate in a honey bee scientific survey, so we are trying to grow "Lemon Queen" sunflowers so that we can observe how many bees are attracted to the flowers. We might try a similar experiment for Monarch Butterflies if we can get some wild milkweed seed to grow. Mrs. Sorvetti wants to try to grow a couple of gluten free grains called "Quinoa" and "Amaranth", the latter being a plant that the ancient Aztec civilization grew for food as well as a natural dye. We'll have to see what happens.

The weeds are flourishing in our gardens and we have a hard time keeping up with them. We have to keep our gardens looking their best, so please feel free to pick a few weeds anytime you're so inclined! Thanks!

Inch by Inch, Row by Row, We're gonna make our gardens grow!

Update from the Garden - Winter 2010

Penstemon is one of the native plants that we planted in our garden back on September 12th. The blooms are a beautiful bright red or magenta and the hummingbirds and butterflys seem to love them! The sages are also starting to bloom now. We put up a butterfly house so that hopefully we will encourage them to lay their eggs in the garden and start the cycle over again!

This is one of the potato plants that came up from our potato patch that we planted last year! I guess we missed harvesting a few when we dug them up!

Here are a few of our crops that are producing currently.

Broccoli Eggplant Chilis

Cotton flowers change from a pale yellow to a rosey color before they fall off. Then the cotton boll forms after pollination. As soon as it is fully developed it will pop to reveal the white cotton covering the seeds inside! We are harvesting some regularly!

The garden club planted a pigeon pea plant that Mrs Sorvetti purchased from a Master Gardener who says they are easy to care for and very tasty. We shall see. We also planted onion sets and potatoes as well as some Aloe Vera donated to us by Emily's family. We are trying to baby along some papyrus grass that we dug up from the front planter at the school. Hopefully it will survive the transplant so that we can add it to the "Fertile Crescent" garden. Then the 6th graders can see what the ancient civilizations used to make some of the first paper. The garden club students have planted seeds for peanuts, beets, carrots, sugar snap peas, lupine, California Poppy, and columbine. Some of the seeds have already germinated and we are anxiously awaiting what will come up. We pulled up the tomatillos and the broccoli and we are getting ready to plant some of the winter vegetables. "Tree People" donated to our school an Apple tree and a Lime tree which we hope to have planted soon. The kids cooked a batch of Ratatouille back in the Fall and they enjoyed it so much that we decided to print a Garden Cookbook for all the families to enjoy. It was fun putting it together and sharing it with everyone before the winter break.

Enjoy the rain, Spring is on the way.