Houston High School and the New and Improved Garden!

I know you all have been waiting and waiting for this blog post!  Sorry about the hold up but it was out of my control!  We have been battling a wild fire here and the firefighter staging ground is at the High School and the transportation tent is actually IN the garden!  But let me give you some pre-fire information before we take a look at that!

This year we had the outer building envelope replaced with new siding at the school and the siding product came in these heavy duty crates made of wood.  They are wonderful and I coveted those crates!  I asked the company about maybe letting us have some of them and as they had to pay for them they said they were expected to keep them.  In the end though they dropped two or three of them in they garden for us to use.  Thank you Eklutna Services! See the blog here for more information on this company and links to their site!

We started by having one of our life skills classes go out during that last two weeks of school (mid-May) and see what we had and what they might be able to build out of the crates - we were looking for some raised beds to do some of our produce in.

Above is Tristan - he was so happy to be able to be out in the garden and using power tools to build something for the garden!

Here is the class turning the beds to put potatoes in.

You can see in the above photo the awesome crates and wood pallets that they left for us.  And there is Tristan in the back cutting one of them in half to build a raised bed.

Here are two of the raised beds out of four that they build before school got out!  It was amazing and the kids were so proud when we said that these boxes are "Beautiful" because we think they are!

The box with the open face that you see here will be turned into a small storage shed for our tools during the summer and winter!  Stay tuned for more on that in another blog!

Here you see the kids planting the carrots and radishes.  We have had great radish production so far but I think it has been a little too hot and dry for the carrots.  We did not have the greatest germination for them.  When you see the photos of what we have going on here at the school you will understand a little better why we couldn't water the way we needed to!  Our hose is not potable water hoses if that gives you a hint!

Kashawn was so happy to be helping in the garden - even just raking the leaves and the dead stuff left from last year!  Look at that beautiful smile!

Here are some of the radishes up and getting growing! 

More radishes and some carrots that did OK in this bin.  This is actually just in late May so two weeks after the planting at most.  The rabbit food bags are actually full of rabbit poo that was donated by one of our teachers for the garden!  It is such good stuff and seems to be weed free!  Yay!

Here are all four of the newly built wood raised bins and they have been filled with dirt now!  Principal Johnson brought his tractor with loader attachment out to the school and filled them for us with the help of some of the kids - saved us so much time and work over doing it by hand!  Thank you Mr. Johnson!  The ones on the right hand of the photo will have squash and maybe some spuds in them.

Here is that open crate that will become the shed!

Here you can see the candy onions (they were sets) at the front of the bin and in the back of the bin against the fence are the sugar snap peas Actually what you can see is the row and the row marker - the peas arent up yet in this picture!!  Our first effort at growing peas!  And Onions!  In the other one we plan to have more peas, some Kohlrabi, and cabbage.  

While Principal Johnson had the tractor here he also put all the dirt on the Hugelkulture beds for us!  Again, such a time and labor saver over doing it by hand!  We havent been able to get them planted yet but we do have plants (Raspberry and Strawberry) that are all ready to go in them!  Again - when you see the garden pictures of what we have in there right now you will understand why!