Our gardens are growing!

July 17, 2019: Garden Update!

St. Cecilia's school gardens are growing well.  We have some beets, sunflowers, potatoes, carrots, and lots of onions.  The broccoli and parsley and green onions we planted are not doing quite as well as we had hoped - but that's ok!  They were new crops for us this year and we are learning!

We plan to plant some radishes in a few empty spaces in the next few weeks that should be ready when students return in September. 

Thanks, as always, to the volunteers that have helped maintain the gardens so far!  Not that we're complaining that summer actually arrived but with all this heat recently, it has been a bit of a challenge keeping the soil from drying up!  

Sunflowers

Potatoes!

A New Garden Season at St Cecilia has Begun!

We've officially opened the St Cecilia School Gardens!

We typically prepare our garden beds on a weekend with many parent volunteers, but this year on May 21, we decided to try something different and invited a Grade 5 class to help weed, till and add new soil to our beds.  They did an amazing job, willingly got their hands dirty and worked for a solid 45 minutes in pairs doing all the tasks that were required.  It was so great to see their enthusiasm and eagerness to help!  Thank you to Mr. Pashkoshki for bringing your class out to help.  Thank you to the parents that came out to help too!  

Then on May 24th, we had 18 classes come through and help us plant all the seeds for this year's crops.  As we learn more and more about this gardening process at St. Cecilia, we have decided to focus on mainly root vegetables that will grow throughout the summer season and will be ready for harvest when everyone returns next year.  So we have planted potatoes, white and red onions, green onions, garlic, beets, parsnips and carrots.  We are also trying Romanesco Broccoli (also referred to by us as "Stars Wars Broccoli") which takes a long time to grow.  We had a generous donation of seeds from a St. Cecilia family last year and put some of those seeds to great use!  

 


We also had some lily bulbs donated last year by another family last fall so they are starting to peak up in one of the gardens and we have decided to make that one bed a "flower garden" by adding Sunflower seeds to it this year.  A work in progress, we just might make this a perennial garden moving forward if anyone has any bulbs or plants they want to donate to this, that would be great!  They need to be a sun-loving plant as there is no shade in our garden area.  

We have many volunteers scheduled to help take care of the gardens as well as our new trees over the summer months.  Thank you to all of you for helping to make this another successful gardening season!  

Our 2019 Volunteer Gardening Crew: 
Garden Lead: Brandy McDevitt

Clean up Crew: Sarah Fraser, Maria Fe Otero, Andrei Dumitrecu, Yukang Li, Tina McLean, Terri Poole

Garden Planting Crew: Jackie Kung, Estelle Mendonca, Yukang Li, Jodi Brown, Fernanda Correa, Michelle Eyamie, Wendy Prichett-Pejic

Summer Maintenance Crew:   Shannon O'Hearn, Estelle Mendonca, Laura Villeneuve, Fedja and Wendy Pejic, Stephanie Chafe, Sarah Yorke, Stephanie Davis, Liam Gerofsky, Elvira Spremo, Julie Dunphy-Bowman, Catherine Fisk, Kristen Tipman, Maria Fe Otero

The Harvest!

We had 16 classes come through and help harvest our school garden on September 18!  We had some crops that grew amazingly (beets, carrots, basil) and some crops that grew just OK this year (lettuce, spinach, onions, potatoes).  We also saw what happened when we leave corn on the stalks too long (they dry up) and when you plant them too late in the season (they are still baby corn!!).  We also learned that you can keep old, dried up corn kernels and plant them as seed for next year.  Some classes may take on that experiment for our next growing season 😃

A special thanks to Laura Villeneuve for helping me to manage the crowds :)  

 

 

The garden is all ready for BACK TO SCHOOL!

The grass is mowed and trimmed.  The weeds are picked and the soil turned.  The crops are patiently waiting for the classes to come through early September to see what grew throughout the summer!  

 

Garden Helpers Rock!

McLean Family Helping with garden tending!

 

Watering bags for the trees donated by Mackenzie and Lucian Dupras  

Finn and Gabe Stone tending to the gardens!

First donation of the season to Parkdale Food Centre

July 5, 2018

We dropped off the first harvest of the season which included spinach, lettuce and basil to the Parkdale Food Centre today!  

The centre was hopping with activity as guests were awaiting lunch and volunteers were busy in the kitchen preparing fresh and tasty food.  

Such a fantastic community resource this centre is!  

It is a shining example of how all food banks could be operating.  

Garden progress!

July 4, 2018 

The last day of school we had a few classes come out and harvest radishes and pick lettuce - thank you to the teachers for your effort to do this during a busy time!  We heard that some students went home with little take away packages and other students munched up their supply in class 😊

A huge thank you to all the parent volunteers that have already spent, or will be spending a lot of time weeding, watering and mowing the grass during the summer break.   This could not be possible without a tribe of helpers so thank you!

RADISHES!

CORN!