April 19, 2012

Sad news first. The deer ate everything.

All those beautiful peas? Gone.

The fine looking arugula? Stripped.

This Oregano?  Eaten to the root.

I expected that the radish and the lettuce would be nibbled regularly, but wasn’t planning on feeding the wildlife so well.

The good news is that children’s exploration of the garden continues and learning is successful. We move forward, taking natural animal hunger into consideration. It is likely that a ground hog has also participated in the feast. It is likely that birds will go after the beans and strawberries, too. So a couple of plans are in the works and will be posted when we have the deer deterrent plans in place.

Strawberries continue to grow nicely.

The threat to strawberries is when they are deliciously ripe.

The chives and sage are thriving. The sage is in the middle of the bee balm photo.

April 26, 2012

What do we do when the rain and weather prevent us from being in the garden? We bring the garden inside! Today’s lesson was on sprouts. We started mung beans sprouting for future tasting. It should take about a week. We viewed a variety of sprouts – potatoes that are ready for planting and volunteer spaghetti squash sprouts from the compost bin. We know they are spaghetti squash volunteers because we put a full, split spaghetti squash in the compost bin earlier this year.

Then we examined soil. Two sources of soil were brought in- soil from a well-developed, healthy, open air, compost bin, and soil from the woods. Both sources were more “humus” than “top soil”. The children answered the question, “What is in soil?” by digging and sorting their found items. Sticks, sprouts, different types of leaves, roots, acorn tops, crab apple seeds, stones, a bit of trash, petals, and a variety of insects were all discovered and sorted. Through digging and sorting, children were building science understanding and math skills, too!

Square 1, the Herb Garden, had an over abundance of bee balm from last year. The bee balm needs to be elsewhere. So, we removed all of the bee balm, and replanted a bit of it in the toddler yard and under a tree by the back door, with a healthy dose of water. The oregano and chives look healthy and thriving. The sage will need to grow back. Did the rosemary survive? We shall see! Expected plantings are: parsley, thyme and sweet basil.

Square 2 has two different kinds of peas growing. We will need a growing frame before too long!

Square 3 has radishes and several types of lettuce. Something is eating all of the radish tops! Could it be a rabbit? There is a rabbit bed in the herb garden! The lettuce seems to be partially eaten, also. There are two large arugula plants from last year, a tasty treat for two legged garden workers! Plans are for flowers after the lettuce dies back.

Square 4 has strawberries! I don’t know who planted them last fall, but they are thriving! Both the peas and the strawberries benefit from salt hay lying between the plants as a weed deterrent.

Squares 5 and 7 are topped with salt hay, waiting to be planted. There are plans for tomatoes and peppers when the weather is ready.

Square 6 has temporary plants for use elsewhere on TMS property. When they find their permanent home, the plan is for zucchini!

Square 8 was planted with green beans today! Half of the square is unplanted. Perhaps Swiss chard or red beets are in order.

Other topics:

The walkways need weeding and new woodchips. There were bags of pine nuggets left for our use, so these will be added sometime soon.

Watering may need to happen (on Mondays?) regularly. We can regularly water on Thursdays during Sustainable Science time.

Toddler house has a raised bed! Toddlers planted beans, radishes and red beets today. One square is planted and one square is available for digging! A tomato and a pepper plant are planned for the near future.

Is your family interested in helping in the garden? There are times when extra help is welcome. See the TMS Friday Flyer to sign up for the Garden newsletters!

February 23, 2012: Compost!

Top layer of compost- food scraps

Today we were able to turn the compost. TMS has four compost bins, two at each end of the school – near the toddler section and also beside the sustainable garden. When one enclosed compost bin is full, the other compost bin can be used. This allows one bin to mature without daily additions. We alternate which compost bin is being used, thus providing more time for the compost to mature.

With children’s house and lower elementary students, we took the top and middle layer of the “bee hive” shaped compost bin off, and worked with the bottom layer of compost.

Sifting the bottom layer of compost

Mixing the new compost into the soil

The rich compost was sifted, which allowed for the smaller sized, nutrient rich compost to be collected. The larger sized pieces of compost were returned to the compost bin for more time to decompose.

Sifting Compost

The sifted, rich compost was mixed in with the sustainable garden soil. We removed the salt hay that protected the soil during the winter, added the compost, and placed the salt hay back on the garden.

The weather is now so warm that next week we can experiment with planting lettuces and early season crops.

We will plant when we have a Thursday without rain!

Sifting Compost

Adding Compost to Sustainable Garden

Finished Compost

Mint tea from the garden

Yum! Zucchini bread, mint tea and tomato pie! In the middle of January, delicious, local food is welcome.

MINT TEA

While the sustainable garden at The Montessori School rests for the winter, the food that we preserved in the fall is available. This week, we drank mint tea. The children helped dry the mint leaves in the fall, and tea was served during our Sustainable Science lesson this week.

Recipe for drying leaves:

Rinse mint tea leaves, lay out on dehydrator, dry. Crush when dried.

Recipe for making tea (as requested by a student):

1 Tablespoon dried leaves per 8 ounces of water. Steep tea in boiling water for 4 minutes. Strain, add choice of sweetener, and serve.

Drying food for preservation

PRESERVING FOOD BY DRYING

The dehydrator was used in the fall to preserve  oregano, sage, chives, parsley, and dill from The Montessori School Sustainable Garden and mint from the Baumgarten family garden. During the lesson this week, apples were available for dehydrating.

Recipe for dehydrating apples:

Wash, peel and thinly slice apples. Lay out on dehydrator so that the slices do not overlap. Dry for 8 hours or until the apples feel like raisins (brittle is too dried). Store in an air tight container.

Winter roots

WINTER ROOTS

Wintertime fresh seasonal food is the food that stores well over time. Apples are good local fruit that store well. Roots are good local vegetables that store well. Today we viewed, handled, and talked about red beets, carrots, parsnips, sweet potatoes, onions and rutabagas.

Roasted Winter Vegetable Recipe:

http://allrecipes.com/recipe/roasted-vegetables/.

Substitute 1 tsp dried herbs for the fresh ones, as is seasonal. Once you roast vegetables, play around with the herbs, and suit your taste and your pantry.

Zucchini bread (TMS zucchini)

ZUCCHINI BREAD

Last fall the children picked zucchini from the TMS garden and shredded zucchini during a food preservation lesson.

This week we made and ate zucchini bread using 2 cups of frozen TMS zucchini.

The recipe can be found at this link: http://allrecipes.com/recipe/moms-zucchini-bread/.

Besides linking food to our own garden, cooking is a fantastic sequencing, measuring and skill-developing activity!

Tomato pie

HERBS FROM TMS GARDEN

The children made tomato sauce using one quart of home canned tomato sauce (Baumgarten garden) and 1 Tbs of TMS dried sage, oregano, red basil, chives, and parsley. These were cooked in a crock pot for 3 hours. The children also made pizza dough using active dry yeast.

Home canning

TOOLS OF FOOD PRESERVATION

Home canning supplies were displayed, handled and briefly demonstrated. The magnetic lid lifter was a hit!

All in all, TMS Lower Elementary children participated in cooking winter food from fall preserved vegetables and herbs.

I can’t wait to plant the 2012 Sustainable Garden!

Enjoy the seasons! Celebrate the seasons!

Children deserve to understand the world that we live in, including that at different times of the year, our life on the earth is substantially different.

In the middle of the winter, we will not be able to go outside and collect tomatoes, squash, flowers and lettuce.  This is the time of the year to eat from foods that have been preserved.

At TMS, we preserved herbs from the sustainable garden, and we saved zucchini in the freezer.  Sometime in January, these foods will be used at school to make something- perhaps zucchini bread; certainly mint tea; perhaps a tomato sauce using the herbs.  We shall see. The pictured herbs – basil, mint, oregano, dill, chives, parsley, sage – are both from TMS, and from my husband’s garden at home. These pictured herbs are in use in Children’s House as part of sensory explorations.

As the Science Teacher at The Montessori School, I promote practices and behaviors that take care of the earth because the earth takes care of us. The Earth provides air to breathe, water to drink, food to eat, and space to live. It also provides resources such as coal and oil which we use for energy.

One of the ways that we can take care of the earth is by reducing trash that goes to landfills. This is why we use food scraps to make compost at TMS – something that used to go to the landfill now becomes useful nutrition for the sustainable garden. We encourage every member of our school community to compost when you are at TMS.

Cheers! Dottie Baumgarten

Compost Plan for The Montessori School:

Food scraps from snack, lunch, and cooking activities are composted along with garden debris.

Reason: When plant material goes to the compost pile, it does not go to the landfill. This results in (1) reducing trash and (2) reducing energy use.  Because: (1) We are making something useful from our own waste. (2) We are not using fuel to transport waste from one location to another.

Steps:

Each class collects their own scraps and takes them to a compost bin each day.

Teachers collect food scraps in the teacher’s lunchroom or they add their lunch scraps to their classroom collection. Aftercare takes the food scraps to the compost bin daily.

When there are events and activities, compost is collected and taken to the compost bin.

There are three compost bins on the school property. One is outside the toddler play area fence. The other two are by the sustainable garden. There could be leaves/garden waste beside the compost bins for layering with the food scraps. The recipe and ratio could be “one cup each of food scraps and yard waste”.

Here is a guide for collecting compostable material:

• If it comes from a plant, compost it (one exception: there are nut allergies in school, so avoid nuts)
• If it comes from an animal, don’t compost it (one exception: eggshells are welcome)

Here are guidelines that children in Lower Elementary are using:

• Compost: Fruits, Vegetables, Breads/Grains, Egg Shells
• Never compost: Meat, Nuts, Cheese or Yogurt

Additional information on compost:

• Cooked fruit and vegetable scraps are compostable
• Coffee grounds (the coffee filter is compostable)
• Teabags (the paper is compostable)
• Natural material – dried flowers and leaf debris are compostable. Crackers are compostable
• Pasta (without cheese or meat) is compostable
• Bread (without cheese, meat or peanut butter) is compostable

Additional information on what “not to compost”:

• No cheese or meat (but cheese-flavored goldfish and cheddar crackers are compostable)
• Compost only a limited amount of oil
• Because there are nut allergies in the school, no nuts or nut butters

Periodically turn or empty the compost bin, and use the finished compost for gardening.

Lower El played a Water Cycle game and each child imagined being a drop of water moving through the world through nine “stations”. The obvious stations were: Ocean, River, Lake, Glacier and Clouds, but less obvious were: Plants, Animals, Groundwater, and Soil. The children discovered that some water droplets move between the ocean and the clouds again and again. We considered what could happen to water when it falls from the sky: Evaporation, Soaking into the Ground, and Flowing into the Creek.

Skirting around the raindrops, the Children’s House students visited the garden. They saw that the lettuce is ripe for harvest! So are the chives, oregano and sage. We picked a banana pepper, a couple of green peppers, and a couple of tomatoes.

Next week we will harvest more lettuce and perhaps a radish. In two weeks, all the radishes should be ripe for harvest if the weather holds. Can’t wait!

Children’s House students noticed the small but growing lettuce and radishes, but had to wait to pick them. We were able to pick a tomato or two, a green pepper or two, a marigold or two, and a few leaves of herbs from the herb garden. Our garden visitors then were able to dig in the “extra” pile of compost to look for worms and other crawling critters. This pile of decaying acorns, leaves, and garden waste is layered with food scraps in the compost bin.

Lower El went on a walk to “find” the stream. Did you know that the rain that falls on The Montessori School property flows across the gravel and grass, down the hill, then down onto the woods path and to the stream? We found a ditch that directs the flow of water to the stream. We “discovered” the direction of the stream, and a place where two small steams join to make the one familiar stream. As soon as the weather is good on a Thursday, Lower El will explore the headwaters of this stream. I wonder what we will find?

Whew! Are you ready for some sunshine? With the rain today, Sustainable Science was inside (with one quick exception).

Lower El focused on compost and learned that we compost plants. So we now know that apple cores, banana peels, and even coffee grounds can go to the compost bin. There is one exception to the “plant” rule: we compost eggshells because they add calcium to the compost.

After the compost lesson, Lower El selected from different garden stations. For garden preservation, we crushed dried mint leaves, picked red basil leaves from our garden to dry and shredded zucchini to freeze. We compared and contrasted two similar but different apples, eggplants, tomatoes, onions, and even pawpaw seeds. Some were from school, some from my home garden, and some were purchased. We also spied a garden slug.

The young students from the Children’s House focused in on vegetables and fruit. They sharpened their observation skills by comparing and contrasting similar vegetables and fruit (listed above). For example, the apples are the same because they are red, but they are different because one is larger. We totally enjoyed watching the slug and played a game of stretching and shrinking like a slug does. Don’t forget the two fingers that pretend to be antennae!

Under a bit of sunshine, some of the Children’s House students were able to visit the garden where they saw radishes and lettuce leaves! We might be able to harvest some of the lettuce next week. We pulled all of the onions. Earlier in the day, I had harvested all of the red basil, a dozen or so tiny tomatoes, one egg plant, a few onions and four green peppers.

We will look for sunshine again next Thursday!

Thursday, September 15, 2011

Today was gardening day. The goal of the Children’s House was to plant a radish seed, and we all were able to do so. We also pulled weeds, noted the tomatoes, peppers and marigold plants, and were amazed at the red fungus that looked like an upside down carrot. One group saw a spider that we were able to catch in an insect holder. All groups were able to view the tiny week old lettuce plants.

Lower elementary children weeded, observed the above-named plants and sweet basil, chives, oregano, parsley and bee balm. We removed the rotten tomatoes and picked the healthy ones.

The zucchini plant has a zucchini bore, so it may not survive. One possible solution is to pile dirt around the stem (above where the bore is), and sometimes the plant will survive. We have four zucchini squash that are growing . . .so I’m hopeful they will grow and that we will be able to pick them very soon. The red basil is nearly ready for harvesting, and we plan to dry the leaves in a dehydrator.

The fungi growing all over the garden are quite remarkable. Red “upside down carrots” catch our attention, decorated by white, round tiny pearls of fungi right beside them.

Next week perhaps we can harvest more. Certainly there will be weeds to pull. I expect the lettuce will be larger. I wonder if the radish will germinate and grow, or if a local animal will eat each plant (as they did in the spring)?

Cheers!

Dottie Baumgarten
Environmental Science/Garden Specialist