A Little Help to get things Growing - A Houston Garden Update

 Thanks to a generous grant for our garden from the Meadow Lakes Bloomers Garden Club,  this year was a ton of fun and learning at Houston in the garden! We used part of our funds to order seeds and to purchase plants for the garden and so the kids could “grow one – take one” and have gardens at home.

Above:  Corn, Alyssum, and Marigolds.  Students grew the corn and the alyssum and Marigolds came from a local greenhouse.

We worked with Mr Brandt’s classroom which is a Special Education Life Skills class.  There are three adults and 6 kids in the class and then we had some other students who came from the Culinary arts classes to help planting seeds as well.  Our Youth360 group that has summer program also helped to plant and keep the garden hydrated in the heat!  We (they) did a ton of watering and they did a great job with the planting too!

This is a group of our Youth360 students and leaders helping to plant.

Snowpocalypse hit in January and we got a few weeks off of school so we were not able to make seed choices until February and order them.  We let the kids pore over some of the garden seed catalogs and make choices of things they thought they might like to grow.  They used a color coded system to mark the seeds, and each student had a different color sticky arrows.  I then made a list of the choices and ordered as many as I could get or substituted for ones that would not grow here/take too long.

Here you can see one of the flower pages that the kids chose Calendula from.  We did get Calendula seeds and we have a few that will go in the garden.

Here are some of the Veg choices and the color coded sticky notes show up well on this picture!

I did have to make some adjustments for things that the kids were convinced would grow here but were way too long season items to produce here.  It was still good to have them dream big about what they could grow.  Okra and Eggplant were two that we chose not to order this year as we do not have greenhouse room to start those.  We did order the asparagus however, and now we are making an asparagus raised bed in the garden for a permanent area for them.  We do have at least 6 plants up and I hope to have a picture of the asparagus bed in our Fall Followup!

We do not have room enough to start everything here at the school right now so we did have some of our tomatoes, cabbage, cauliflower, and broccoli started for us by Snowfire Gardens and the Carneys.  Their greenhouse system allows them to start very early in the season.  We have those plants back now, ready to be planted in the raised beds.

Our students started a big mix of veg and flower seeds.  We also took a trip to Jacobsens Greenhouse and to the Fred Meyer Garden Center and the purchased some flowers and herbs.

Our herbs and pollinator pots to go out into the apple orchard to help draw in the bees and pollinators for the apple trees and berries.

They made hanging baskets with part of the flowers to take home for Mother’s Day, and they also made three large flower and herb pots to leave here at the school as pollinator attractor’s for the orchard and when fall comes they will bring them back into the classroom so they can use the flowers and herbs in their cooking classes.

Top left Jon and Alex plant seeds.                          Top Right Jon and Camille plant seeds.

Our seeds came from all over the place this year!  There were some shipping issues, and companies that shipped to Alaska last year would not this year.   Seed sources include:  Foundroot – A Sitka based company of Alaska Growers and included our “Silvery Fir and Honey Drop” tomatoes (watch for those in the end of season "tomato roundup"), “Dark Star” Zuchinni, and cabbage.  Totally Tomatoes which included our “Big Boy” Tomatoes (Germination was poor for this variety for some reason this year).  Strictly Medicinal Seeds which included our Nasturtium, Calendula, and Cosmos seeds among others, Territorial Seeds which included our Green and Burgundy Beans, some peppers, cabbage, and we had a donation from a school staff member of Pepper and tomato seeds because his “eyes were bigger than his garden”! 

We got a grant from DNR “Tree Grant” for $400.00 last year as well that paid for the Apple Trees and part of the wire surrounds for them.  With a portion of our remaining funds from the Bloomers Grant for this year we will be adding some donated Cherry trees (probably Crimson Passion, Bali/Evans and Carmine Jewel), including purchasing some soil amendments for the trees and our raised beds, and will be purchasing the fencing materials to make the protective rounds around them like we did for the Apple trees last year.  We did lose at least one top portion of an Apple surround that blew away in the big January storm and we have not been able to find it, so we will be replacing that as well.

The weather has been so hot that we have not been able to plant anything out in the garden without worrying about it being shocked, we have had to keep things in the shade.  When the classrooms closed for the summer we had to move some of our products out to the garden as we might not be able to access them due to the building cleaning schedules and of course, it froze that first night (28 degrees) that we put plants out!  Even though we had hardened things, we still lost a few items to that freeze but nothing that isn’t easily replaced.  The corn and asparagus survived, as did the herbs and a few of the zuchinni.  The tomatoes look a little rough but might make it. 

Above you can see the flower pots in the orchard to help get the bees to our apple trees!  Above right you can see the pots and the flowers and herbs in them.  Flowers included our calendula, cosmos, nasturtiums, which our students grew.  We purchased some lobelia, Alyssum, Petunias and a few Pansy as well.  Not all are edible and we will be teaching those skills when the students return n the fall and we move the pots back inside.  Herbs in the pots included Sage, Thyme, Rosemary, and Pizza Oregano!

This is a better view of the blooming September Ruby Apple with the Red Pollinator Pot next to it (left) and of the Parkland in full bloom (right).

Above you can see the September Ruby apple tree with one of the Red Pollinator pots to the left of it!  Can't see any red can you?  The students planted all but the Petunias in this particular pot and it has thrived!  We so enjoy having the flowers in with the veg this year!

That’s the update for now and Ill post an update after the summer is done so you can see harvest and additions to the garden then!  Happy Summer  and Blessed Be!