Sprouting Squares!

Throughout this past week, we've taken several trips out to our garden to water our seeds in our square foot garden and watch them grow

When we went out on Monday, we found some seeds had already begun to sprout! 

At the end of each week, we will be taking our Cool Weather Crops Log out to the garden with us when we water to log what we see in our squares. By the end of this week, every single one of the squares in the giraffe class had some sprouts!

While we were outside, we also got to enjoy the other beautiful blooms out in our garden :)

We hope our plants enjoy a nice soak this weekend along with some sunshine!

Growing Our Garden

On Monday, after returning from our spring vacation, we were welcomed back to school with some beautiful blooms! After 6 long months, our tulips FINALLY blossomed, showing us their beautiful red blooms. They were joined by some daffodil friends, too!

  (click here to check out the Journey North Tulip Map!)

While we were excited to see our beautiful flowers out in the garden, we got to work planning and planting some "cool weather crops" in our raised garden beds. This year, we are trying out the Square Foot Gardening Method in our second grade bed! While we will all work together to plant beans and tomatoes on the ends of our beds, the middle of our bed was broken up into squares--while the size of our garden beds don't allow us to break our bed up into 3 rows of 8 9"x9" squares. Each second grade classroom has 6 of these squares to plant in, and students are working in small groups to grow one cool weather crop in their bed.  

On Tuesday, the giraffes and elephants got together in their small groups to decide on what to plant and plan out the way they would plant their seeds. Each group could choose from peas, swiss chard, beets, radishes, or spinach, and depending on which crop they chose, they drew a diagram of how they would need to plant their seeds on our Garden Blueprint

On Thursday morning, we headed outside after snack to plant our seeds just before the rain came! We each took turns planting our seeds in the soil, and we all got a chance to water our seeds after sowing them in the garden bed and we labeled each square with a paint stirrer 

When it wasn't our turn to grow, we spent our time exploring the other parts of the garden and reading books from our Little Free Library!

We even brought a little bit of our garden back to our classroom :)

We can't wait to watch our seeds grow over the next few weeks!

Journey North: Planting The Seed

On Friday, we headed out to the garden to begin the first step in our "Journey North" project. Each fall, people across the Northern Hemisphere plant Red Emperor tulip bulbs in Journey North Test Gardens to help monitor seasonal change in a scientific way. In the spring, when the plants emerge and bloom, test gardeners report their data to the maps. One garden at a time, the relationship between climate, geography and the greening of spring is revealed. We are making our SMS Wolves Green Grower's Lab one of those test gardens by planing our own Red Emperor tulip bulbs around our garden beds. We reported our planting to Journey North so we can begin to track our growth. 

Once winter passes and spring begins, we will begin checking the garden for signs of growth where we planted our tulips. Once they begin to grow, we will report our findings to Journey North. We will also be able to see when other test gardeners begin to see their tulips sprouting! Local climate affects where, when, and how plants grow. Over time, the timing of plant growth can be used as an indicator of climate change. Everyone who participates in this international tulip test garden project contributes valuable information to a long-term database.

When we weren't planting, the giraffes made observations around our gardens and drew diagrams and wrote notes to keep in their science journals

We enjoyed our time out in the garden, and we can't wait to see our tulips bloom in the spring!