Winterizing The Garden

On Tuesday, the sun finally made an appearance again so we could head outside to help our PTO Volunteers winterize our school garden!

First, we moved all of the rocks bordering our mulch garden to make it safe for the snowblowers to make a path along the garden when the snow arrives. 

We added all of the rocks from last year's 5th grade to our rock garden!

Some of the giraffes and seals headed into the flower beds to pull out any annuals (plants that only grow once) so the beds were clear while other giraffes and seals collected leaves from the grass to put in the beds.

The leaves in the beds will help to keep the soil temperature up so we can get to planting in the spring after the thaw, and it will also bring more nutrients into the soil as the leaves decompose!

the corn stalks and their roots reminded us of the story Room on The Broom! 

As always, thank you to our PTO Volunteers for helping us out in our garden, we love getting to use our "green thumbs"! 

Inch by Inch, Row by Row

On Friday, we went outside to explore our school garden and get it ready for fall planting! 

We met a few of our PTO Volunteers out in the garden to help do some fall planting. We planted daffodil bulbs that will grow into beautiful flowers in the spring!

We each put on a pair of gardening gloves and grabbed a shovel before planting our bulbs in the ground

One of our twins even got to plant a "twin" bulb!! 

Afterwards, we got to explore around in and around our garden, looking for plants and insects and sharing what we already know about gardens with our friends

We looked at many of the fallen leaves and acorns that were on the ground around the garden and we were able to determine that the leaves we found were from maple and oak trees, and we learned that maple leaves turn red because of all the sugar in their leaves! We love watching the leaves change color outside, and we can't wait to see our daffodils brighten up our garden in the spring. 

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!

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!