Garden Update - October 10, 2007

Happy October! The garden is STILL green and very full of food and amazing learning opportunities. Please read below for lots more info and resources…

In this Garden Email:
1. What's Available for your Class Now?
2. An Easy Way to Get Outside - Plants and Seasonal Changes
3. Apple Cider Update

* * * * * * * * *

1. What's Available for your Class Now?
If you are interested in harvesting any of the following items or
doing any of the following activities with your class, simply reply to
this email and let me know. I will reserve it for you and help you
do/harvest it with your class! In these coming weeks, the following
is available:
- potatoes for harvesting
- broccoli (some edible buds, but LOTS of yellow flowers with
pollinators all around - see how broccoli is really a flower!)
- SEEDS: dry soy beans, popcorn, fennel, chive, flowers
(batchelor button, calendula)
- planting garlic
- planting wheat
- planting cover crops and preparing the soil for next spring
- harvesting basil and other herbs
- harvesting purple and green string beans
- tomatoes
- salad greens
- cucumbers
- tomatillos
- pumpkins
- dry beans
- husk/ground cherries
- gourds for drying
- watermelon
- carrots

2. An Easy Way to Get Outside - Plants and Seasonal Changes
Take a field trip right in your own school! Come observe plants
changing with the seasons with periodic visits outdoors in the garden
(come at ANYTIME with your class). Have students take a look at a
small branch on a garden tree (choose any but the larch pines near the
doors), observe it carefully and tie a piece of bright yarn on it (in
shed). Ask them to make a detailed, scientific drawing of it. Come
back each month or each season and draw it again to watch leaves
change, dormancy, and budding. You can also do this with perennial
plants (strawberries, viburnum shrubs, chives or other herbs, etc).
You can compare it to the cycle of annual plants (those that will die
when frost hits and need to be started from seed in spring).

3. Apple Cider Update
The apple cider press will return to the Peabody in the last week of
October. Please respond to the Apple Cider Email (coming soon) to
schedule a time if you are interested.