Nothing like a fresh rain!

Hello garden friends!

Well if you were lucky you also received some rain in your part of town today, certainly our garden did!  This is a great thing because not only does it give our thirsty plants some water, but it is also considered to be "soft" water.  Rain water has not been treated with the chemicals that are used to clean our drinking water, therefore it has a lower pH and can be easily absorbed by the plants.  We hope to install a rain collection bin in the future and that way we can have a sustainable source of water as well as hands on way to teach students about the acidity and alkalinity of water.

Sooo, lots to see in the garden today, we have our first ripened tomato, with many more to follow and all of our other sprouts are growing and looking well.  It does look like a few of our lettuce leaves have been munched upon as well as one of our baby figs, but all in all things look great!  Check out our pictures to see the progress and for extra fun scroll back to the first pictures and see how much has changed already!

This past weekend my daughter and I were able to visit Washington DC and spend some time at the National Botanical Garden, they have a whole garden dedicated to medicinal plants as well as some vegetables, check out the pictures of the big tomatoes and papaya tree and the information on fruits and their medicinal properties.  There was also this really cool house for kids that had a roof made out of plants!

Also thanks to the team at Reynolds Elementary for a great open house tonight, we are excited for a great year to come.

I will be in the garden tomorrow from 9:15 to 10:45 along with Mrs. Swanson our guest reader so we welcome anyone who is interested to please stop by!

This house had the coolest roof!

Juicy tomatoes at the National Botanical Garden in Washington DC

Information about plants and fruit and their health benefits at the National  Botanical Garden in Washington DC

Look at that papaya! National Botanical Garden in Washington DC

Our rain dropped first ripe tomato!

Our bean plant is on the fast track now!

More bean plants!

Starting to look like lettuce!

Can you tell this is rainbow chard?

These will be yummy carrots in no time!

I say it is almost time to make a pizza with our fresh herbs!?

The lantana and the peach tree are looking peachy! get it!!

Even our fall crotons were happy about the rain today.

Wednesday is garden update day!

Hey there fans of the Reynolds Elementary Garden!

So on this weeks "check up" of the garden there were many exciting new findings.  First, as I walked over to the peach tree I was greeted by a lovely butterfly.  I was happy to see that the lantana and the peach tree that we planted were all doing great.  However, we do have some grass growing into the bed that we will have to combat!  Then I checked on the sprouts and saw a furry little caterpillar hanging around, hopefully we will complete his chrysalis without munching on too many sprouts!  Then as I checked in on our tomatoes, I was happy to see that we have more growing and the ones that were already there are getting bigger every day.  As I was inspecting for new tomatoes I found a huge "tomato horn worm" he was an ugly bugger and was happily munching away on our plant, I did leave him there so that the kids can check him out and understand the difference between "harmful" and "helpful" insects...  That being said I think I will show them as soon as possible so he does not eat all our plants!

Our learning lesson thus far has been that some of our seed was not very good, as you will see in the pictures we have two beds that have almost no sprouts at all.  So, Plants for All Seasons, one of our garden donors, generously gave us more seed which Ms. Neskori will plant with her fifth grade students this Friday.

Our herb garden is lovely its bathtub home and seems to have really enjoyed the rain we received over the past few days.

Also be sure to come for a "book in the garden" this Friday from 9:15 to 10:45.

Enjoy the pictures and will check back in

Our resident butterfly

Hopefully this is NOT the very hungry caterpillar!

Our first enemy, the Tomato Horn Worm!

Can you see the baby tomato?

Here are our lettuce sprouts, I think!

I believe this is a bean sprout!

Our seeds that never sprouted, you garden and learn!

more sprouts!

the three amigos!

A pizza waiting to happen!

next Wednesday!

Week 1, the seeds are sprouting!

So it has been one week since we put our little seeds in the ground and now it is time to watch them grow!  It has been very hot this past week so making sure they get a good drink every day has been high on the list of things to do.  So far I have seen a few carrot, lettuce and chard sprouts come up as well as a few baby tomatoes that are starting to grow!  See if you can find the tomatoes in the pictures!

Some chard and carrot sprouts are popping up!

Here are some more sprouts, who knows what might pop up!?

Yummy lettuce sprouts on their way!

Soon this will become a green pepper, yum!

Can you find the baby tomatoes?