Round Romeo Baby Carrots

These small ball-shaped delicious baby carrots are extra morsels to enjoy in just a few bites. The have an excellent sweet taste and a crunchy texture. They don't need finely prepared soil, and they are fast and easy to grow. They are widely adapted to perform well in home gardens. They emerge from the ground after about 10 to 20 days. You need to keep them well-watered and thinned. They like the position of full sun. Let these Romeo Baby Carrots color up to orange before harvesting. You should plant them 14 days before you last frost date. It's botanical name is daucus carota. It is known to reach a height of 15 centimeters and 5.85 inches. Afghanistan is thought to be where the round Romeo carrot originated.

Firecracker Lettuce

Firecracker Lettuce is a loose leaf, red lettuce available in late winter-spring. Firecracker Lettuce is a winter crop that withers in extreme heat, so it does best in cool weather. This lettuce is thin, glossy, and wavy. It compliments these flavors: bold, cool, sweet, and nutty. It has bitter, sharp, and bright taste. Some of its best flavors are in salads and rich pasta dishes. You can grow some of this yummy treat.

Toscano Kale

Tuscano kale is also known as Tuscan kale, Lacinato kale, Dinosaur kale and Palm Tree kale. It is grown around the fall and sometimes winter. This vary healthy type of kale helps your body by giving it more than 100% of your daily value because of the two vitamins: A and K. It's not only very healthy but very yummy, too. If Tuscan kale is in the right condition, it can grow two or three feet tall, maybe even more! It's good to start early like in the fall or winter. Don't worry if it frosts over. This plant likes it with a little bit of frost. If it's too cold, cover it with a frost cloth. This kale loves rich soil and lots of sunlight! It can also be grown in the desert because of its bright sunlight. As for pest, you need to spray it, not with chemicals, but with a powerful jet force of water! If you tend to see damaged leaves, cut them off so the damage will not spread. Lacewing bogs lay their eggs on this plant which is great. Lacewing bugs are predators that do not eat the plant that it's on but eats the bugs and/or the pest's eggs. They can be very very good for the Tuscan kale. At harvest time, you can make many good recipes with Tuscan kale like, Tuscan Kale Salad, Potatoes with kale, Hot and Sour greens, and many many more!

Vates Kale

The Vates Kale is usually used in side dishes and stir-fry dishes. Vates Kale season as they call it never ends. This amazing kale can suffer in freezing temperature and extremely hot temperatures. The freezing weather will sharpen its flavor. If you steam the kale and serve it, the flavor will end up delicious! The Vates Kale needs at least 6 hours of sunlight daily. The time it takes to reach adulthood is around 53 days. The color varies from blue to green. Vates  Kale is also called the Blue Curled Kale.

Savory Leaf Spinach

Did you know that Savory Spinach lasts longer than other spinaches? Savory Spinach can slow the aging process, is sold more in stores than other spinaches and can last in cold temperatures. In 2010, California produced 71% of U.S.A. fresh spinach. California makes the most spinach in the U.S.A. Savory Spinach is a low calorie food that you can make tons of recipes. We planted around 8 of them in our garden. They surprisingly have not been nibbled by the bugs. We can't wait to eat them.

Redbor Kale

The Redbor Kale loves to be in the sun but likes the cold weather. It's growing temperatures is -7°C / 19°F to 27°C / 81°F. The Redbor is beautiful in all ways, they have reddish purple, frilly leaves and can grow up to 45 cm. The Redbor is considered a hybrid cultivar and grows well in the spring and fall. Redbor Kale needs full sun and medium amount of water.

Red Russian Kale

Just planted Ragged Jack Kale

Red Russian kale is also called Ragged Jack Kale. The red Russian kale is an annual vegetable that grows in cooler weather. It can be used in cooking to make kale chips, and you can boil them lightly. The frost from cold weather improves the taste of the red Russian kale. You look for firm leaves and pass on the placid or yellow ones. The Red Russian Kale is grey green in color and the stems are purple. It is larger than most other kales and stands two to three feet tall. It is a mature plant in sixty days. It's leaves are shaped like oak leaves.

Seeding

Before

We planted 4 different types of seeds: carrots, radishes, beets and turnips. We had 2 available rows to seed. The carrots got their own row while the radishes and turnips shared a row. We saw the radishes and turnips after 5 days, but the carrots took about twice as long to make an appearance. Because we ran out of space, we placed the beet seeds in between the lettuce, kale and spinach. The beet started showing about the same time as the carrots.

After

Planting Round Two

Because of the extra row and space added to the garden, our first planting was not enough. We got to plant 4 more kale, lettuce and spinach each. They were planted a week later, but you could tell which ones were in the ground longer. All we have to do know is make sure they stay watered and keep pulling the nut grass.

Rotation 3

Students from rotation three finished mulching, cleaned the job site and carried all of our trash away. They also planted some spinach and watered all of the new plantings.

Rotation 2

Students from the second rotation planted 4 variety of lettuce and mulched some pathways just like the first rotation. They also moved rocks around to help again erosion and weeds.

Rotation 1

Students from the rotation one class mulched some of the pathways and planted 4 variety of kale. They learned that mulching helps with water conservation, erosion and weed control.

Kale, Lettuce and Spinach

Welcome, Rows

Thank you to Laura, Polly, and Sally for all of their help for getting the rows in place so the fifth grades can begin their planting. They were able to make a sixth row which means more veggies!! We want to give a super big thank you to Charlotte for organizing everything and getting the task completed quickly. The fifth graders are very appreciative. All of you guys rock!!

Goodbye, Nut Grass!!

After

Before

We are pleased to announce that the nut grass has been removed. Over the weekend, many volunteers pitched in and helped remove all of the weeds and nut grass. This was a huge task. We want to thank everyone who took time last weekend to help make this difficult job a success. Some of the volunteers came both days this weekend!! We can't thank you enough: Polly, Isabell, Cristina, Sally, Jeff, Ray and Matt. Some students even come to help as well. Patricio, Max and Ollie were rock stars. We want to give a big special thanks to Charlotte for organizing the effort and truly making this event happen and successful. Thank you to everyone!! We can't wait to make things grow.

Fall Garden Prepping

It's time to begin thinking about our fall garden. We have two major issues: drainage and nut grass. A wonderful gentleman named John Barr donated his time and effort to help us with the drainage problem. He was able to use some existing and new rocks along with a large pvc pipe to correct the situation. We are awaiting anxiously for a downpour and crossing our fingers to validate his incredibly hard work. Besides fixing the drainage issue, his work added previously unusable space so that our garden will be bigger and better than in the past. Thank you, John Barr!! We truly appreciate your kindness, expertise and effort for our garden!!

Spring Harvest

 It was looking like we were only going to be able to harvest the potatoes because our tomatoes were green and were not ripening. Something happened over the 3-day weekend because when we returned, we had more red tomatoes than we could handle. Because they ripened so quickly the fifth graders were about to make potato salad and salsa. We mixed the potatoes, thyme and onions together with mayo, relish and salt/pepper. Everyone enjoyed sampling the potato salad. We did not get to add dill because the plants died a few weeks prior to the harvest. Appartantly, dill needs a lot more water than the plants in our garden. The salsa was easliy made but cutting the a couple jalapenos, onions and tomatoes into fourths and zipping them in the blender with some salt. Yes, we forgot to add the cilantro. The salsa was a hit with the fifth graders as well. They loved sampling it with a couple of chips.

 

Erosion

We recently had a rain storm that had a great deal of flooding. "After we saw a video of the very hard rain close to the garden, we needed to put these rocks there to keep the soil from eroding. It worked!!", stated Cole. The fifth graders went to work to stop the erosion that was occurring in the garden. We placed pine needles around the garden and along the rows to help keep the topsoil in place. We also added rocks on the side of the garden to guide the water away from the row that we being eroded. Elise explained, "I thought that this was really neat and a good thing to do for the garden."  

Herbs, Tomatoes, Peppers & Potatoes

We finally planted the rest of our Spring garden: herbs (dill, cilantro and thyme) tomatoes (many varieties including cherry and regular), peppers (jalapeno) and potatoes (golden). The students did a great job of prepping the area and planting because ALL the plants survived. He had to water them daily because it was so sunny and many of the young plants didn't like the sun at first. Austin explained, "I thought planting the tomatoes and potatoes were really fun too because now we have a full garden." "Potato, tomato these potatoes and tomatoes are growing great!!" Lexi called out. Cole exclaimed, "These plants have grown well."

Onions

We started ur Spring garden by planting the onions. Each student was able to plant one onion which meant we planted over 100 onions or 4 bunches. Most of the onions were planted well and caught on quickly. It has been dry so we watered them everyday for about 2 weeks. Surya said, "The onions in the garden are sprouting faster than I expected." Nate thought, "The onions are growing fast. I hope they're done growing soon." We used two variety of onions, white and yellow. The yellow onions seem to be doing better than the white ones. We can't wait to taste the difference.

Turnip and Radish Harvest

We got to harvest our turnips and radishes. Aedan remarked, "The turnips tasted very plain but actually were really good. The radishes had an actual flavor that you could taste even though it was very slightly bitter." Aedan also mentioned, "It was fun to use the garden to grow stuff and actually be able to eat it." Jill states, "I thought the turnip and radish was a good test not only to watch the plants grow but to eat them. In the end, they tasted really good like a mild sweet taste." Most students tasted both plants and enjoyed eating them. Like the lettuce and spinach, we had ranch for dipping. More was used this time.