Summer fun, garden updates and upgrades!

Hello Reynolds Garden fans!

I hope you have all had a great summer and are ready for an amazing year!

Over the summer the garden has been busy although it was also left to its own devices for a few weeks.  While you were away we have had many harvest days, taking home bagfuls of tomatoes, eggplant, okra, zucchini, basil, cilantro, onions, chilli peppers, bell peppers and strawberries!  The okra and eggplants are still healthy and producing lots of fruits!

With all of the rain, the garden has also been home to a variety of critters, ranging from butterflies, spiders, caterpillars and even frogs!

The Eagle Scout candidates that had projects planned for the summer are almost done implementing their wonderful projects.  As you walk out to the garden you will notice a lovely new pathway, a new compost and rain collection bin, and soon a new sensory bed that will be raised for easier wheelchair access!

We have lots of exciting adventures planned for our outdoor laboratory.  We will be planting, calculating, tracking, hypothesizing and even painting art projects, so bring your creativity and your energy and we look forward to seeing you in the garden!

As always, I welcome your feedback, ideas, or just love hearing from you!

Maryah
nuzha13@hotmail.com

Yummy summer harvest!

the garden as of today!  Out with the old and ready for the new!

Our fabulous new decomposed granite pathway, thank you Edgar!

Our resident frog!

Edgar, our Eagle Scout candidate and him amazing family.

The support crew.

Pathways are not made easily!

More summer harvest!

Ikaika Jensen, our other Eagle Scout candidate made us our very own Rain Collection invention and a self contained Compost as well!  This is an amazing contribution, thank you Ikaika!

More frogs!

Sunny summer days ahead!

Hello gardeners!

Can you believe it has already been a year since we all first stepped into the garden!?  It certainly has been an exciting year and a continual learning experience.  We have grown a great variety of produce this year and have witnessed the miraculous journey of a seed to a lovely piece of fruit or vegetable.  We have observed the effects that weather and our environment have on our crops and the habitat of the garden.  Some of the kids were also lucky to catch glimpses of the insects in action, both helpful and harmful.  

Take a minute to scroll through the first photos of what was just an empty plot of grass and see all that has happened to take us to what our garden is today!  

I hope that the students, teachers, faculty, and volunteers have enjoyed the addition of the garden to Reynolds elementary and that together we can work towards making this outdoor learning center a fantastic complement to the schools learning tools!

Looking towards the fall, please reach out to me with any ideas, feedback or comments, this is our garden and the more variety in participation the better!

nuzha13@hotmail.com

Also, we will be working in the garden over the summer, planting, harvesting, cleaning, maintaining and PICKLING, we will have many okra, cucumbers, tomatoes, eggplant and much more, if you like gardening please let me know and I can keep you informed on our work days!

See all the exciting photos below and have a great summer, don't be strangers!

Thank you for joining us on this adventure in learning!

Maryah Nijim Roberts

The "garden lady"

Garden soup made by Mrs. Mann's first grade class, yummy!

Our pumpkin is taking over!

Happy figs growing!

Little pumpkin in training!

A Sunday harvest, and those are 18 inch cinder blocks, some huge zuccini!

May Flowers!

Hello everyone!

I hope that you have all had a great end of April and beginning of May!  Certainly our many April Showers brought us some lovely May flowers, vegetables and fruit!

I also wanted to congratulate the school and all those who organized the Carnival on what a great success it was!  I believe fun was had by all and we also had many new parents and kids come out to visit the garden.  A big thank you to Mrs. Mendez for making her delicious fresh Mint Watermelon Juice, two of the many things we are growing in the garden at this moment!

This has been an exciting year for the garden as it was planted and sprouted just this past August.  I thank all of the teachers and students for being so supportive of the Reynolds Elementary Garden.  Looking forward to this next year we will take into consideration all the great feedback that was provided in the surveys and strive to make the garden a teacher friendly learning tool for the whole school.

We are still hoping to have a stand at the Grogan's Mill Farmers Market before the year is up, however, with the weekends running out it just may have to be a summer activity.

For all those who would like to stay in touch with the garden this summer please send me an email as we will be working in it over the summer and most definitely will be harvesting over our hot summer months.  One way we can preserve some of our bountiful harvest will be by "pickling" some vegetables, we can pickle okra, beans, and cucumber!

Our Eagle Scout candidates will also be carrying out their projects over the summer, so hopefully when school returns in the Fall we will have some lovely new updates to share!

I know many of you are busy with rounding up classes and studies for the end of the year, so if you would like me to stop by your classroom with some treats or show and tell from the garden please email me and schedule a time that suits you!  Today I was able to bring the green peas that Mrs. Sasitarch's class planted and I have harvested enough for them to all enjoy some!  Also, as you will see in the pictures, the cucumber plant that was planted from seed by the second grade has already produced some nice looking cucumber, everyday we will be on the lookout for new tasty treats!  The other things that are all fruiting are the tomatoes, okra, sugar snap peas, zucchini, strawberries, eggplant, and of course our resident pumpkin plant that just might take over!!!

Teachers and faculty, if you are making some tasty dishes for dinner please feel free to come and harvest some fresh herbs, I have to trim them back often and always give them away to the first person I see in the hallway!

I will be in the garden this coming Monday at 10 if you would like to join me!

Thank you,

Maryah Nijim Roberts, nuzha13@hotmail.com

Twin okra!

Yellow grape tomatoes coming soon.

More yummy tomatoes!

Strawberries on their way!

Can you see the different stages?!

Lots of strawberries to come!

Zucchini and potatoes and herbs, yum!

Super sweet sugar snap peas!

Our monster pumpkin plant.

Time to watch it grow!

Pickle in progress!

The gladiolas are blooming!

Grow little mandarin grow!

The "herb" bath tub!

The harvest for the day!

Grow plants grow!

Hello everyone!

Well we have had a great past few weeks, some lovely summer like weather as well as some crisp spring mornings and most importantly some great spring showers!

Over the past few weeks we have been busy in the garden.  Principal Louis and some other Reynold students joined us for a "work" day, where we cleaned up weeds, cut back the grass and planted new plants, we even got to begin harvesting our radishes.  We now have tomatoes, peppers, okra, eggplant, onions, potatoes, squash, green peppers, brussell sprouts, radish, sunflower, strawberries, melon, green beans, basil, oregano, cilantro, and thyme all growing in the garden! 

I have seen some butterflies and bees buzzing around the garden so hopefully our blossoms will all be pollinated and we will have some great harvests coming up soon.  If you go and check on the Satsuma tree you can smell the lovely blossoms, they are truly lovely!

I was able to attend the awesome Spring Fling at Kolter Elementary, where we learned ways to improve our garden, network with other school and community gardens and develop curriculum.  One other school garden that was in attendance was Oak Forest Elementary that is in the Humble ISD, they have a great school garden and have developed a nice curriculum which we can take a look at and utilize as well.  It was very inspirational to see other gardens that have grown over the years.  Principal Louis was also able to visit and was inspired as well!

Please find some pictures of our garden adventures below!

If you would like to schedule some time in the garden or an activity for the classroom please contact me so we can set up a time!  I will be in the garden tomorrow Wednesday, at 10 am.

Thank you and I hope to see you out there!

Maryah
nuzha13@hotmail.com



Happy helpers and yummy radish!

Principal Louis and the "work" day team

The herb garden gets some new basil, lemon verbena and more, watch it grow!

Our Brussel Sprouts are huge!

New plants are ready to take off!

Some more radish is almost ready to pick!

The potatoes and squash are sharing a house with the radish.

Green beans and cilantro, watch them grow up the fence!

Lots of yummy strawberries soon!

Smelling the lavender at Kolter Elementary.

Beautiful Blue Bonnets in the Kolter sensory garden.

Sneaking a tasty strawberry!

Kolter's garden is inspiring!

Marigolds for natural pest control and pollination!

The delicious smelling blossoms on our Satsuma tree!

Our cactus has bloomed!

The basil is already bigger!

Look how much the potatoes, radish and squash have grown in just a couple of weeks!



The beans are working their way up the fence!

Our cucumber is very happy!

Hunting for radishes!

Time to wash them up and try a bite!

It is officially Spring!!!

Hello there!

Sorry for the long break from our blog, between the cold weather and Spring break the garden has been laying low!

However, that does not mean that it has been idle, not at all!  We welcomed our first Garden Club members to a day in the garden where we explored what we have growing, harvested some lettuce and prepared it to be served in our "green smoothies" for our Reynolds Family Science night.  The smoothies were a hit as well as our garden club.  Currently we are figuring out the best time to meet as well as how to get anyone and everyone who would like to visit the garden out there even if they are not in the club.

We have also expanded the garden and planted many seedlings with the 2nd grade, many of which are now growing in the garden.  We also had a 1st grade class come out on their own and plant some green beans along the fence, so be on the lookout for some climbing vines!

Right now we have tomatoes, eggplant, okra, sunflower, brussell sprouts, pumpkin, radish, peppers, potatoes, onions, purple basil, lavender, and many more herbs and landscape plants that are all new to the garden!  Come and watch them grow, now is a great time to come and visit the garden and see what all the plants look like before the magic of our sun and rain make them grow into big edible plants!

Our goal is to grow enough vegetables for us to enjoy as well as take some to a local farmers market and have our very own produce stand.  The goal will be for the students to set prices for the produce, sell it and manage the payment.  We will also spread the word on how great it is for other people to start a garden at their own school!

Also Mrs. Miller is working on some fabulous art that will be displayed in our garden, so be on the lookout for that as well!

Please let me know if you would like to do anything specific with the garden, we still have room to plant more things and I will be there this coming Friday from 9:15 to 10:15 and we are tentatively scheduled to have a "work" day in the garden on Saturday March 29th. 

Teachers, feel free to plant and take the kids out there as you like, I am here to coordinate and help you optimize the garden space for you and your students, I love to help but I do not have to be there. This is OUR garden so feel free to blaze ahead!

Also, on April 5th, Urban Harvest is hosting their annual Spring Fling at Kolter Elementary, HISD and the focus will be on school gardens, you are most welcome to join us and children are also welcome the event will be as follows, please let me know if you would like to attend!

The Urban Harvest Community Gardens Committee presents the Spring Fling Saturday, April 5th from 11-2pm.
There will be planting and recipe demonstrations, school curriculum, as well as garden and prairie tours! 
This event is a potluck, so make sure you bring a dish to share! 
In an effort to reduce waste, we ask that you please bring your own plate and utensils. 
Please bring your family and fellow gardeners! 

Kolter Elementary School

9710 Runnymeade Dr Houston, TX 77096
Email kelly@urbanharvest.org with any questions.

 

I look forward to seeing you in the garden, I will be taking more photos now that we have some new pictures subjects sprouting!

Maryah
nuzha13@hotmail.com

 Our delicious "green smoothies" in the making!