Sorry folks - I thought I had already pushed the publish button on this one back in October! Yikes! Here it is a little late!
Oh! We had so much fun in the garden this summer! Houston High and the Great Potato Project has come back to harvest again and this year we planted purple (blue) potatoes and they are wonderful! They are even purple on the inside too! We actually planted a few pounds of a few different varieties (Red 2 pounds, Yukon Golds 2 pounds, yellow finger 2 pounds, and blue/purple 2 pounds) for a total of 8 pounds of planted potatoes at the school garden. If you remember from a previous blog we did tire plantings, raised bed planting, and we did pallet bin plantings, different varieties were spread throughout the garden in the different bins. We went out with the kids to harvest and when we pulled the first tire bin open - behold the blues! These potatoes are beautiful and we had great success with them too! For our 8 pounds of planted potatoes we got 27 pounds 3 ounces of produce! More than triple what we planted!
We had a civics class at the school that had to do some Community Service hours as part of a project they were doing for a grade and we had a number of them sign up to do garden work as their choice for completing those hours. Some of the kids had never been in a garden before much less harvested their own food! It was awesome so see how gently they began to dig carrots and then their excitement when an "actual carrot" came out of the soil!
The Sun Gold tomatoes we planted in recycled tires were also a big hit - most of the kids thought you couldn't grow those outside here in Alaska!
The tomatoes hung like grapes on the vines and they were perfect rounds and tasty! Even through the windburn and some terrible weather over the summer the tomatoes thrived. We were able to tie them up to the fence which makes the perimeter of the school as support.
This coming summer we are already gearing up to do a lot more - we will finish the hugelkulture beds and plant raspberries and strawberries, as well as out potatoes, carrots and tomatoes. We will have some squash as well but will do more than one bin of carrots in our expansion. We will have two apple trees that are hardy to Alaska, and we will have some Rhubarb as well to go along our fence with the tomatoes - maybe in tires - maybe not! Stay tuned.....this season bigger and better!
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Oh! We had so much fun in the garden this summer! Houston High and the Great Potato Project has come back to harvest again and this year we planted purple (blue) potatoes and they are wonderful! They are even purple on the inside too! We actually planted a few pounds of a few different varieties (Red 2 pounds, Yukon Golds 2 pounds, yellow finger 2 pounds, and blue/purple 2 pounds) for a total of 8 pounds of planted potatoes at the school garden. If you remember from a previous blog we did tire plantings, raised bed planting, and we did pallet bin plantings, different varieties were spread throughout the garden in the different bins. We went out with the kids to harvest and when we pulled the first tire bin open - behold the blues! These potatoes are beautiful and we had great success with them too! For our 8 pounds of planted potatoes we got 27 pounds 3 ounces of produce! More than triple what we planted!
We had a civics class at the school that had to do some Community Service hours as part of a project they were doing for a grade and we had a number of them sign up to do garden work as their choice for completing those hours. Some of the kids had never been in a garden before much less harvested their own food! It was awesome so see how gently they began to dig carrots and then their excitement when an "actual carrot" came out of the soil!
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| We grew the "Atomic Blend" carrot mix in our raised bed and the colors were so fun for the kids. They didn't know carrots came in anything but orange! |
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| This photo is fairly early in the season, by the time we harvested the carrots were about twice this size! |
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| Spud diggers getting down and dirty! With big smiles! |
Even though we had grown potatoes last year, the kids were still stoked to be pulling those up and seeing how well they did - even in our poorest of growing medium!
A Culinary arts student dicing perfect potatoes for one of the classes in preparation for cooking them!
The Sun Gold tomatoes we planted in recycled tires were also a big hit - most of the kids thought you couldn't grow those outside here in Alaska!
This coming summer we are already gearing up to do a lot more - we will finish the hugelkulture beds and plant raspberries and strawberries, as well as out potatoes, carrots and tomatoes. We will have some squash as well but will do more than one bin of carrots in our expansion. We will have two apple trees that are hardy to Alaska, and we will have some Rhubarb as well to go along our fence with the tomatoes - maybe in tires - maybe not! Stay tuned.....this season bigger and better!
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