Baldy View Garden News - 2011

Hi There to all of you garden followers! We had a great year in the garden club but I was so busy that I never remembered to post the news to this blogsite. Alec Heir and his family were so kind as to donate (a beautiful houseplant to me!) and a Home Depot gift card to the garden. We will have to put it to good use for tools to help our garden grow. Thank you Alec! The 5th graders helped to earn about $100.00 for our seed fund through recycling! Thank you 5th graders, you're awesome and so are your teachers for giving you the time to help our school to do what's right and recycle. Speaking of recycling, our rainwater capture barrel works really well thanks to our district groundsmen. They had to work with it to make it fit our downspout but they figured out an ingenious adapter and it has captured several barrels of water off the roof rain run-off this past year. We will use this water to water the garden during the summer months.





Here's a brief update on what we did this past year:





Fall session - We worked on a lot of weeding and planting wildflower seeds. We made accordian books about our native state bird (Quail), tree (Redwood/Sequoia), and flower (Ca. Poppy). We also made some tomatillo salsa verde before we pulled up the tomatillos. The 8-10 navel oranges someone picked from our tree were great.





Winter session - We had Christian, from Upland High School government class, come to help us in the garden. He helped us plant Rhubarb, onions, and Chayote Squash and we also cooked up some Chayote with stewed vegetables from the garden. We made fresh lemonade and then we used the lemon skins as a mini-pot to plant squash and corn seeds in. We transplanted some of our wildflower seedlings from the session before - unfortunately the frost or something got to those seedlings and many did not make it through to Spring. We also weeded a lot and watched the blueberries we had planted last year flower out!





Spring session - Again, we had Christian and his friend Luis come help us in the garden! The students really seem to enjoy having some young adults come and show interest in our farming attempts. This year we have been fortunate to have some very able students that were just as interested in growing things as we are. We planted the seedlings from last session (lemon rind and all) and, when school closed down in June, the squash and corn were growing fine. We planted some peanuts, marigold companion plants (to repel bugs) and some tomatoes and bell peppers. Luis and Christian taught Mrs. Sorvetti about a traditional hibiscus flower tea/punch called "Jamaica". I had to try it, so we made some and almost everyone loved it! I'm trying to find out if we can grow the specific plant here in So. Cal. This session we were able to harvest our abundant blueberries and strawberries and we cooked them up with some rhubarb. It made sort of a hot fruit compote that we poured over cupcakes that we made using fresh eggs from Mrs. Sorvetti's chickens! Yum! Oh, and by the way, the Chayote squash is growing and so are the peanuts and the rhubarb! I am happy to report that after about 1 and 1/2 years wait we are finally seeing the pigeon peas set fruit! The bush is taller than we are!





The composting bin was full at the end of the school year with beautiful rich compost ready to use. And to think, it was going to be part of a landfill but the cafeteria ladies worked diligently with the students to make sure that our garbage was recycled into the compost bin. Our worms were doing really well, so I donated them to another school garden, Redeemer Lutheran, that is just getting started in Ontario.





Have a great summer! Happy Gardening and Healthy Eating to all!

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.

The Plants in our new Garden

A few of the California Native Plants at Baldy View





Chilopsis linearis

'Burgandy'

Desert Willow

Aristita purpurea

Wild Grass

Wooly Bluecurls

Trichostema
lanatum








Sages:
Salvia
clevelandii




Salvia
leucophylla
'Point Sal'


















Desert
Mint



Monardella
villosa










Many of these California native plants were used by the California Indians.




My dog 'Shasta' enjoying a Sunday nap in the garden!






More plant identification to come in our next posting!

Planting Day! Sept. 12, 2009

Visit our new Baldy View
California Friendly Garden!

What a wonderful turnout! A big THANK YOU goes out to all our terrific families and students who made our Sept. 12th planting day so successful. We started out at 8:00 am and finished up at about 1:00. Everything looks so beautiful and we did it all ourselves.

We had Andrew Kanzler (Inland Empire Utility Agency) teaching us how and where to plant the native and drought tolerant plants,

Bob Jones (father of 3 terrific daughters that are BV alumni) who directed students in planting as well as the big job of knocking down and spreading out our HUGE decomposed granite pile,

Mr. Dixon who graciously donated his time to BBQ us hotdogs for lunch (with chips) and Mrs. Dixon who was a digging machine!






Mrs Barnes and Mrs Beuhler both came and lent a hand planting, as well as many wonderful moms and dads who came and supported our school by planting over 400 plants,

leveling and raking a HUGH pile of granite

and we can't forget the "water girls" who kept our lovely new plants from getting too thirsty!

We didn't even need to call on the UUSD groundsman for support! Everyone worked together and finished the job in record time, and it looks beautiful! Our families are wonderful and we are proud of their accomplishments.

Update on the New Drought Tolerant Garden Progress

Today the first phase of our drought tolerant garden irrigation lines went into the ground. Our IEUA liason, Andrew Kanzler, was there to assist the UUSD groundsman in the installation. He is the gentleman responsible for creating the landscape design plan for our lovely garden and he will be helping us complete the final portion of the irrigation after we have planted the greenery. Next step will be tilling in topsoil, laying out the planter beds and planting the trees, shrubs and groundcover plants. We can use all the help with planting that we can get, so everyone get your shovels ready! Right now we are looking at Sept. 11 as our delivery date and Saturday, Sept. 12 as our planting date, but more information will follow as we firm up the schedule with the IEUA grant team.

In the garden we have a cotton plant that is beginning to set the cotton bolls. Mrs. Sorvetti is very excited because she has never seen cotton grow before and thinks the cotton flower is so pretty!

There are a lot of birds and insects we have seen over the last week enjoying our garden. Our friend the Praying Mantis has taken up residence again on the sunflowers!

There are also a lot of weeds that have taken root! Anyone who would like to help clean up the garden weeds with Mrs. Sorvetti is welcome. Some of the Baldy View staff and students have enjoyed eating some of our summer harvest of vegetables. Maybe Mrs. Sloan and Mrs. Martinez will share their recipes on our blogsite for their stuffed zucchini and tomatillo salsa. School begins in just a few more days and we hope all the students will visit the garden and tell their parents to come on Back to School night and see "what 's growing on".