Seasons greetings from the Garden!

Hello there Gardeners!  

Lots has happened since our last post!  I hope you all had a great Thanksgiving break and now we are almost ready for our Winter Vacation!  

As you may have noticed we have several nights that have reached freezing temperatures, this weather is great for pretty color changes in the leaves on the trees, but not so great for many of our warmer weather plant friends.  The cucumber, basil and some of the bean plants did not take well to these cold temperatures and if we want to save them next year we will try building some "cold frames" to protect them.  However, our lettuce, cauliflower, some beans, carrots and even some tomatoes continue to grow and ripen.  If you are out in the garden take a look at the center of the cauliflower plants and you will see little white heads growing!

We had fun making "green smoothies" and pizza with some of our first and third graders, check us out in the pics making pizza and trying smoothies!  We even had some fun lessons from Mr. Feriante during our "garden to kitchen" day in Mrs. Higuera's class!  We even learned new words, "diameter" is the distance across a circle, and we learned the word "improvise" when we needed to find something to spread our pizza sauce, and we learned that it is "improvisar" in Spanish which is a cognate, a word that is similar in English and Spanish!  

Improvise - create and perform (music, drama, or verse) spontaneously or without preparation.

Diameter - A straight line segment passing through the center of a figure, especially of a circle or sphere, and terminating at the periphery.

Second grade also made a delicious vegetable soup for their "Ugly Vegetable" book and were able to come out to the garden and pick some some green beans that we were able to use in the soup!

We hope to have some yummy cauliflower that we can cook up with the students soon.  If any faculty have recommendations or would like to do some cooking or lessons in the garden please let me know!

We just started our garden adventure a few short months ago and have already learned, tasted and experienced so much!  I look forward to working with you all in the new year and planning our crops for the spring season!  

Also if you know any parents or staff who would like to be more involved in the garden please let me know we welcome all participation!

Thank you!

Maryah

Making pizza with our little Chefs in Ms. Rodriguez class.

Our lettuce, cauliflower and carrots love this cold weather!

Mr. Feriante with some tricky questions!

Almost everyone loved the smoothies and even asked for more!

Our basil is not too happy but the other herbs don't seem to mind the cold.

A baby head of cauliflower, it will be fun to watch it grow!

Can you see that the lettuce we harvested is not tall and "gone to seed."

Poor cucumbers...

This bean is looking ready to munch on!

This one too, it is a sugar snap pea!

Our little tomatoes are still trying to ripen despite the cold and cloudy days!

Our first carrot, it is a "stubby carrot!"