Gardening with Ms. Palo's class

Comments written by one of the students:
"When I compost I take all of the dead weeds, veggies, fungus, twigs and leaves throw that into my dark brown compost bin. I think composting can really help our land and environment stay clean and safe. That's why think composting can totally help our community, environment and whole WORLD stay nice and clean."

In class we discussed what goes into the compost bin, what decomposing means and the names of some of the decomposers. They then looked at the worm bin to identify the decomposers. The red wriggler worms were most plentiful.

In the butterfly garden they spotted a green caterpillar seen below on a nasturtium flower. They also planted tomato and lettuce seeds in a seedling tray. Finally, they snacked on broccoli with ranch dressing.

A green caterpillar is on a nasturtium in the butterfly garden.

The kids are investigating red wriggler worms from the worm bin.

2nd graders learn about borage, meet a caterpillar, and work in the garden

Today's garden lesson on borage dovetailed nicely with a story the kids have read in class about bees.  Here are comments from our guest bloggers from Ms. Yoshida's class and Fein's class:


We learned  about borage. We saw some carrots. We learned about snapdragons. We saw rosemary and lavender. We looked for grubs.  We made a salsa garden.  Clay soil is better for planting. We found 30 grubs.


Today we learned about the plant borage .  Borage attracts bees. It has these white small stick things that are very spiky and  they hurt us. Borages flowers are purple.    We also learned about 2 different types of soil one type was clay soil the other type of soil was sand soil.   We also learned that clay soil is better for planting.  We also learned that sand and clay together is silt. We found 40 grubs and a hairy caterpillar.

To see information about borage, which has edible flowers, go to: http://www.organicgardening.com/learn-and-grow/borage. The kids passed around some borage from my garden. Some perceptive kids mentioned that the flowers looked like those of lavender, which we do have in the garden.

We continued discussion on soil. I mentioned that clay soil is better than sand for our plants but that silt, which is a combination, is best. (We add amendment and compost to our beds to improve drainage.)

Some children in Ms. Yoshida's class planted peppers in our Salsa bed. They join tomatoes and cilantro. The kids will get to eat salsa at the beginning of next school year.

The children loved the black caterpillar which I had found at home. They do love bugs!

Children in Ms. Conner's class and Mr. Jacobs' class added beans to their Three Sisters Gardens. They also picked a huge radish. The kids learned that when arugula and radishes go to seed, or are finished, they produce flowers. The white arugula flower is edible as is the blue/purple radish flower. (A reminder, only eat flowers that you know haven't been sprayed with pesticide).