Welcome Back to School St Cecilia!!!

Welcome back to St Cecilia!  What a great (but fast) summer season!

The school gardens did really well this season and we have some great crops ready for classes and kids to explore, harvest, learn from and maybe even eat during the month of September.

We made another donation to Parkdale Food Centre of kale and lettuce but left a bit for students to check out when they are back.  We have HUGE beets ready for harvest (I have never seen beets this big before!) as well as lots of carrots and potatoes.  There are a few pumpkins growing as well as some onions.

Stay tuned as we wrap up our second year of successfully growing and learning from our school gardens.

Huge Onions!

Student Volunteers among the lettuce

Student volunteers in the carrots!

Biggest Beets Ever!

Almost half way through summer and our garden is thriving!

Thanks to the hard work of our amazing volunteer team, St. Cecilia's school gardens are thriving. Our onions, carrots and beets look fantastic and will be huge by the time students and teachers return.  Our potatoes and pumpkins are growing; we have a new crop of radishes planted thanks to a lovely volunteer and we just harvested our first crop of lettuce and second crop of kale.

There is always a silver lining in everything:  while the rainy weather might be dampening our outdoor activities, our gardens sure do like it and since our irrigation pipe is broken again we are grateful also to Mother Nature for the water it has been providing for our crops.  I don't think there will be a need to ask the fire department to water for us this year!  

Yesterday, we again donated 5 garbage bags full of fresh lettuce and kale to the Parkdale Food Centre and they remarked how excited they were to receive this as lettuce and kale is one of their more expensive purchases to make for clients.   They tweeted about us yesterday to say thanks for the donation which you can check out here:  https://twitter.com/ParkdaleFood?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor

We hope you are enjoying your summer vacation!

Thriving garden!

Volunteer checking out our carrots

Harvested Kale

Bags of lettuce and kale!

Making a donation to Parkdale Food Centre

First crops are ready before school is out!

With just one full day left at school, I am happy that some of the early crops that we planted with the students just 5 weeks ago are already ready!  

Today, I harvested all the radishes (thanks to some of the Grade 5 and 6's for your help in planting them!) and cut the first batch of kale (thanks to Mrs. Smith's Grade 1 students for your help in planting them!).  All the crops (three big bags!) were left in the teacher staff room and hopefully some students will get to take a taste test in their classes before leaving for the summer.  

Radishes are harvested!  Many of them are huge!

First crop of kale harvested!

Kale plants cut down and ready for new growth

We again planted potatoes this year.  Since I am not too experienced with how these grow, I decided to do a little experiment.  I had been told that covering up the greens of the potato plants with additional soil allows potatoes to continue to grow on top of each other.  So today, using just one corner of the potato garden, I mounded up soil over 9 potato plants.  We'll see if that little corner yields more potatoes compared to the potatoes that are not covered.   

Carrots, onions, lettuce and beets are all growing well.  All the rest of the crops will be ready for the students when they are back in the fall.  

Carrots

Onions

Happy summer break to everyone! Check back here throughout the summer to see how the garden is growing while you are away!

TLC for the Garden

Thanks to the amazing volunteers that have been coming out so far to help get our garden on a great path!

We have crops growing and kids actively involved in helping that to happen.



 

 

A New Garden Season Has Begun!

St. Cecilia's School Gardens are up and running for hopefully another fruitful season! 

A huge thanks to all those that came out on Saturday May 13th on a cold morning to help prepare the garden beds and clean up the school yard.  It took a lot of helping hands to add new soil, pull up weeds, rake up rocks on the grass left from old snow piles and  pick up garbage and old debris from the gardens surrounding the school.  It is amazing how quickly just a bit of work can start to transform the outdoor landscape.

This year, we organized the vegetable garden planting into 2 separate days so that classes could rotate through and help get the seeds and bulbs into the ground.  We had a majority of the children plant at least 1-2 seeds each which is pretty impressive given how many children are at St. Cecilia!  Thank you to the parents that came out to volunteer and help coordinate the children and classes.  Thank you to the teachers for be willing to participate in this experience for the kids.

Now, the garden is already growing! We have radishes, onions, kale and carrots all starting to come up.  We have planted potatoes, lettuce, beets and pumpkins as well.  The radishes will be ready for harvest before the children leave for summer break and the hope is that the remaining crops will be ready and available when the children come back to school in September.   We will likely be donating some of the lettuce and kale again throughout the summer to local food banks as they are a crop that keeps on giving throughout the season.  

Radishes

Onions

Carrots

Managing the gardens could not be possible without the help of volunteers over the summer months who have committed to weeding, cutting grass, watering and managing the crops as they grow. Thank you so much for your participation in this project - it is so valuable for our children to see how food grows!  















Stay tuned for further updates on this blog as the garden continues to grow.  If you have any pictures or comments that would like to be shared with the St Cecilia school community, I am happy to receive your them at StCeciliaSchoolGardens@gmail.com

Growing Up Organic and Putting the Beds to Rest for the Winter

Yesterday I had the privilege of joining some of the grade three students in a soil workshop facilitated by Jenn at Growing Up Organic.  The kids learned about how much of the earth is made up of soil for us to use to grow things with (just 3%!) and how important things such as bugs contribute to making good soil for our crops to grow.

We will do an experiment with one of the beds over the winter to see how composting can help improve the soil quality (and therefore how much we can grow next summer).

The kids also got to enjoy eating the last crop of beans.  They were literally competing to get more and noticed how sweet and yummy a fresh picked bean tastes compared to a store bought bean! 

There are a few final things that need to be done to our gardens for get them ready for winter - but all in all this has been a great first gardening season at St. Cecilia.  

                                Last week of summer vacation!  

Our school gardens are looking great and are ready for the return of students and teachers.  Last week, we were also excited to see new sod being installed - all of the sudden the school yard is green again and there will be so much more space for everyone to run and play now that so many portables have been removed.

Here are some pictures showing you the progress of the gardens:

Pumpkins are growing well! 

Happy Harvest Pickers!  Thank you :)

The first major crop of tomatoes - unfortunately many more were overripe and had to be composted but these little guys are going to be pureed and made into a spaghetti sauce for some of the students to enjoy!

Pureeing the first batch of tomatoes.  They will be frozen in batches until we have enough to make a yummy spaghetti sauce.

 

 



The kale and lettuce just keeps on going!