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Reflections ​from
​valle crucis

"Putting the Garden to Bed"

11/20/2016

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Spring gardening is more fun than fall gardening for most people, but some things must be done each year.  The fall clean-up is often called "putting the garden to bed."  Our mild November weather let the third graders finish a lot of end-of-season tasks in and around the pre-k garden.  Third graders raked and bagged leaves; weeded and transplanted strawberries; gathered seeds from cosmos, dill, cilantro, and zinnia plants; picked up trash; pulled up dead plants and composted them; and moved mulch.  The next day, first graders watered the transplanted strawberries. This area of the campus is ready for gardening to begin again next spring!

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Daffodils

11/8/2016

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Our biggest fall gardening project has been adding daffodils to the edges of our campus.  All but a few students in the school have been involved in planting them.  Each class that planted had 100 bulbs to put in the ground.  First grade classes counted bulbs so we could keep up with how many we were planting.  The bulbs were a gift from a plantation home in Alabama, and the varieties are over 50 years old.  We know they are primarily yellow and white flowers, but we won't know which varieties are where until they bloom in the spring!  Not all the bulbs will bloom the first year, but if we can keep them from being mowed, they will be on the campus for years to come and will continue to multiply.  
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Eating from the Garden

10/6/2016

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Students have been enjoying harvesting, preparing, and eating food from the garden in the past two weeks.  Our first experiment was salsa, made with our own tomatoes, peppers, and cilantro.  Several teachers who tasted it asked for the recipe, but we think it was not the recipe that made it so good--it was that the ingredients had just been picked!  This week we harvested our basil and made pesto.  In both recipes we used garlic that had grown all last winter and was harvested in the summer.  Our lucky principal dropped in just as we were serving and got to sample the pesto with angel hair pasta.
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The Secret Garden

9/23/2016

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The Secret Garden in our courtyard garden. It is both inside and outside.  The best part is that it doesn't get visits from deer or groundhogs.  But the shade from the building impacts the amount of light it gets.  Last spring, third graders planted vegetable and herb seeds and transplants.  The garden has done well, and now we are harvesting tomatoes, squash, cucumbers, cilantro, peppers, and basil.  
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Plants in our Pollinator Garden

9/21/2016

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The first plant that we added to our pollinator garden was Jewel weed.  It has flourished!  It is now making seeds and I am confident that it is there to stay.  Another plant that is well established is Monarda (bee balm).  We can see new plants coming up around the roots of those we originally planted in the back of the garden.  Rudbeckia (brown eyed Susans) are also well established and blooming now.  We've had excellent bloom from the coneflowers we planted and have high hopes that they will come back next year.  Surprisingly, our Blue Lobelia is doing very well, considering that this is a dry year and it is not in an especially wet spot.  New York Ironweed is growing well though it did not bloom this year.  Liatris bloomed earlier but may not have survived the dry weather we've had.  False Indigo did not bloom but is established, and we plan to add more False Indigo seed to the garden before cold weather.  We have Cranesbill Geranium that bloomed well and survives, and plan to add more.  As we learn more about our site--for example, it is sunnier than we realized it would be since it is against a wall of the school--we will be better able to select plants that are appropriate for the light, soil, and water that we have.
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Reflections on the Pollinator Garden

9/14/2016

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I came into the process of developing the pollinator garden half way.  The children had already placed cardboard over the site to kill the grass and prepare it, and I had already seen their excitement about what was going to come.  The development expanded beyond the second grade class that had identified the site as we enlisted afterschool program students to add more cardboard and make suer the grass was adequately covered as spring arrived.  Then we engaged middle school students to bring bags of mulch to cover the cardboard.  The first planting was Jewelweed--which was difficult for me to see since my previous experience with Jewelweed had only been to pull it up!  Nonetheless, the students were excited about the first plants to go in.  Then the perennials arrived!  A volunteer from the community helped us create a plan for their arrangement, and the second graders went to work.  Adults dug holes in the mulch, students removed plants from their pots, and into the ground they went!  We had color in the garden throughout the summer, and as fall arrives, still have blooms to enjoy.  The pollinator garden remains a work in progress. Last week, third graders began the process of places stone that they brought from home to create a border around one side of the garden.  Yesterday, afterschool students became very excited when they found a moth next to the brick wall. I suggested they move it to the pollinator garden.  Today, we plan to harvest some seeds from the garden, and next week, we will plant more!
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First Summer Gardening Day!

6/30/2016

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Rain led to a slow start to our first gardening workday, but the rain stopped at 9 and we were able to get a lot done!  We weeded the Little Diggers' garden which will be a pumpkin patch this year.  It has some dill, cilantro, spearmint, and some flowers that have come back from previous years' seeds.  Check it out next time you are at the Valle Crucis campus!
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Spring Planting!

6/16/2016

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Arbor Day Tree Planting!
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Sixth Graders transplanting lettuce!
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After school students prepping the potato bed!
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Third Graders harvesting kale seeds!
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Planting the pollinator garden!
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Students preparing the potatoes for planting!
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Middle School students planting asparagus!
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Fall is  in  the  air

9/13/2015

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It cooled  off quickly  this  weekend and the  days  are  really  getting  noticeably  shorter.  I have pulled most plants  from   my   in  ground   garden although I  really  hoped  that this  could  have  been  postponed.  Late    season tomato blight arrived in  what  seemed  to  be just  one  day.  Came  home   Thursday of  last   week   to  see  all   my  tomatoes  with dried  and  withered  leaves.   Ouch!  Pretty  depressing  since days  earlier I'd had  the  best  looking  tomatoes  I've  ever   grown with   4-5 ft high  plants    covered   with big   tomatoes  showing first signs of  ripening.  Picked 33  lbs  of greenish tomatoes  which  I  will  attempt  to   ripen  but  ultimately  not  sure   what  I'll  get.  My  detroit   beets  were  also  pulled amounting   to   about 5 lbs  of  medium  to  small  fruits.  Not  impressive.  Pulled 8 lbs of  corn  which  was  also   small  in  size    and not  fully  developed.  I   knew  the  light  conditions  in  the garden  were  not    great  so  perhaps I  should   be   content.  I'm still  getting beans and  I  will    leave  these  plants  in    for  awhile  longer  along   with   zinnias.  The   Secret  Garden is  doing pretty  well  for  the  time   being  but as  I've  said   before it's  a  race   with  time.  Sun  is   quickly  disappearing.   Starting some   cabbage  and  lettuce  with  the  after   care   kids.  They  are   having   fun and  we'll  see  if   we   can't keep  some   things   growing.   I  have  learned  so  much  this  growing  season.  The  climate  in  the  mountains  is  truly   unique.  Next   spring  I  will  take  what  I've    observed  and   try  to get  things  to  the  next   level.  






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Classroom Aquaculture

9/6/2015

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    Dana Holden

    Has been gardening for over 20 years and has her Master Gardeners certification. She is especially interested in propagating native plants and apple grafting. She is now the After School Program Coordinator and Garden Coordinator at Valle Crucis. 

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Contact:
828.386.1537
​info@brwia.org
Location:
Blue Ridge Women in Agriculture Office
P.O. Box 67 | 969 W King Street
 Boone, NC 28607