September 20, 2010
Sukkot is almost here! This morning, as the Giraffes and Kangaroos built the sukkah, the Frogs attended to a task that they have been waiting for months to accomplish. While other classes have been harvesting green beans and tomatoes all summer, the Frogs have been watching their corn grow, and grow, and grow, waiting for Sukkot to harvest it. This morning, they took a saw and cut down all of their corn! Some of it went into the classroom to serve as schach for their classroom sukkah. Some went onto the roof of the ECC sukkah as schach as well. But the stalks were so beautiful that most of them are adorning the sukkah as decorations attached to all of the poles on the frame.
August 3, 2010
Wow! All of the rains over the last month have led to an incredibly lush garden! The main July crops have been lettuce, carrots, and green beans, and as the month came to a close we harvested our first respectable quantity of cherry tomatoes.
In addition to what we have harvested, we've seen really encouraging growth in some of our late-summer plantings. We have four watermelons developing and some squash growing nicely. Our ornamental corn is definitely "as high as an elephant's eye" and our pumpkin plants are flowering.
We've had plenty of basil whenever we need it, and soon we'll harvest a whole lot of it and make pesto!
Here's July's haul:
- The Kangaroos harvested two pounds of carrots and half a pound of cherry tomatoes. They made carrot soup and carrot salad out of their carrots! They also made a tomato and basil salad with their cherry tomatoes. Yum!
- The Zebras harvested 1.5 ounds of mixed greens, a half pound of spinach a quarter pound of carrots, and two pounds of green beans. The children love the green beans, so they tend to get eaten up quickly. The mixed greens were combined with the Ducks' lettuce to make our Independence Day salad.
- The Ducks harvested 3.5 pounds of lettuce and 5 pounds of green beans!!!! The lettuce became part of our Independence Day salad, and most of the green beans were eaten at the picnic as well.
Pics below:
July 2, 2010
It has been a busy month in the garden! During mid-June, the classes started harvesting lettuce and radishes in even greater quantity from the garden!
Over the last month:
- The Ducks harvested six pounds of lettuce.
- The Zebras harvested a pound of radishes, 3/4 pound of spinach, 3/4 pound of mixed greens, and a pound and a half of snow peas.
- The Giraffes harvested 6.5 pounds of lettuce.
- The Kangaroos harvested a pound of radishes, and our first green pepper!
- We have been watching the Frog room's Sukkot garden start to take off - the corn is still only about as high as a newborn elephant's eye!
- The Lamb room's sensory garden smells, tastes, and feels great!
Here's what the harvesting looked like:
In these pictures, the Ducks are picking produce, washing it, and weighing it!
This is what the garden looks like right now! The torrential rains of the last few weeks have been terrific for the growth of the garden!
It is green, lush, and colorful!
Carrots in the midst of salad greens The tomatoes are growing!
The pole beans are looking very colorful This pepper is waiting to turn from green to red.
Ornamental corn, with gourds and pumpkins flowering behind the corn.
June 4, 2010
Today was our annual Grandparents and Special Friends Shabbat luncheon. In an exciting development, the greens and radishes in the salad at the luncheon all came from the ECC garden! The lettuce and radishes were picked yesterday afternoon, so the salad was really fresh!
The garden is really thriving! Here are a few more of the items that are growing very well:
Chives growing quickly The herb garden is doing well -oregano, sage,
dill, cliantro, mint, and lamb's ear!
The Zebras are checking on their plants - their lettuce and spinach are really coming up in this picture.
June 2, 2010
Our first harvest of the year! Today the Giraffes dodged the rain and picked radishes!!!
After picking the radishes, the children tried them. Here are some of their comments!
Sammy: "Yum"
Otto: "I think there was a little spice."
Benjamin: It burned my tongue!"
May 5, 2010
The Giraffes add new seeds to their planter, and check on their planter during small group time. Some of their first seeds are starting to germinate!
May 4, 2010
The toddlers from the Duck and Bunny rooms headed out to plant in their planter on the Infant/Toddler playground. After planting seeds, the toddlers watered with spray bottles.
April 21, 2010
Last Thursday, the Zebra room children cleared the garden beds on side of the building close to their classroom using rakes, hoes, and hands. They also planted seedlings to eventually go in the cleared beds!
April 20, 2010
Late last week, Noreen and the children planted asparagus in the middle of the Star of David planter by the sandbox, as well as some horsradish root. They also went outside the fence to plant some saplings behind the garden area!
Digging a trench for the asparagus
The saplings
Planting a tree!
April 14, 2010
Today, the Lamb Room (2-yr-olds) planted more seeds along the fenceline!
Shai plants a pea! What do we see here? A worm!
Shai and Roni get more peas from their teacher Jessica while Kinga plants hers by the fence.
April 12, 2010
Today, the Zebra Room planted peas! The peas are being planted along the fenceline behind the garden plots, so that their vines can climb the fence. The effect should be functional and aesthetically pleasing!
April 11, 2010
Garden Work Day! 16 families descended on the ECC playground to build new planters, re-arrange the exisiting raised beds, clear ground, mulch, and more!
Marking the new arrangement, and removing the existing raised beds
A raised bed planter finds a new home!
We needed one more long planter...
Patching the bare spots.
Working around the edges.
The new garden layout!
A tremendous amount of work went into making all of this happen on Sunday. Our thanks go to the Grand family, the Smiley family, the Siegal family, the Parker/Kuranz family, the Andorsky/Siegal family, the Florey/Engozo'o family, the Schnieder/Harrison family, the Strumba family, the Atzmon family, the Brater/Dillaway family, the Barsky family, the Mates/Wolter family, the Isser/Sax family, the Tovi family, Nancy Witter, Ray DeYoung, and Josh Sanchez!
April 9, 2010
Today we got prepared for our big Garden Work Day, to take place on Sunday the 11th. We picked up compost from Recycle Ann Arbor's drop-off center, and bags and bags of donated mulch.
Here are a few last views of the old garden arrangement:
We're ready to get to work!!!!
April 7, 2010
After a long weekend, our seedlings are making progress!
April 2, 2010
Now that we had a lot of space to grow seedlings, it was time to plant!
Noreen set up a seedling planting station on a table and the children came running!
Nina, Talia, and Ruthann plant their seeds!
April 1, 2010
Our plant stand arrived today! First we had to assemble it....
Back in October, a group of parents gathered on a Sunday morning for the second Garden work day of the year. 
In early October, Noreen and children from many different classrooms went to work harvesting the potatoes! 
The potatoes had been planted in stacks of car tires, which made it easy to harvest them. First, Noreen unstacked the car tires, and then the children dug through the soil for all the potatoes. After about 15 minutes, all of the potatoes were in a bucket, ready to be washed, and turned into Latkes!
As the summer came to an end, the Kangaroo room harvested cherry tomatoes from their garden box daily. During the height of the summer, the children would eat the tomatoes fresh off of the vine, but now instead of eating the tomatoes as they picked them, the Kangaroos saved them until they had enough to make a tomato sauce. The ECC gardens produced a huge amount of basil this year as well, so the Kangaroos had the basis for a great tomato and basil sauce. In late October, they borrowed an electric skillet from the kitchen, and made tomato sauce in the classroom. Combined with some whole-wheat penne, it was a delicious snack!
