This week we welcome springtime into our school garden as pollinators begin to emerge and our vegetable starts continue to grow. With the arrival of students, energized from Spring Break, I am looking forward to their help and ideas in building up the soil and making our garden a healthy, thriving space for plants, beneficial insects, and birds.
We’ve already learned a few lessons in our experimental garden:
* The resident thistle and dock populations are going to be stubborn about giving their space over for our plants.
* Birds and slugs abound in the garden and are particularly inclined to munch on the seed starts that we plant in the raised beds.
These are simple, but impactful lessons for any gardener—especially one that is just founding—and remind me everyday of the long-term care that is needed to help this garden thrive.
Please consider volunteering your time this Spring during our garden classes or during volunteer work parties—see VolunteerSpot for signing up—to help me and our students build an educational garden (rather than a weed garden). As I tell the student gardeners, the work will put in now means twice the enjoyment and half the work in the future.
We’ve already learned a few lessons in our experimental garden:
* The resident thistle and dock populations are going to be stubborn about giving their space over for our plants.
* Birds and slugs abound in the garden and are particularly inclined to munch on the seed starts that we plant in the raised beds.
These are simple, but impactful lessons for any gardener—especially one that is just founding—and remind me everyday of the long-term care that is needed to help this garden thrive.
Please consider volunteering your time this Spring during our garden classes or during volunteer work parties—see VolunteerSpot for signing up—to help me and our students build an educational garden (rather than a weed garden). As I tell the student gardeners, the work will put in now means twice the enjoyment and half the work in the future.