Last spring, the students of the Islesford Schoolbegan working on a school garden. After a very difficult growing season, we realized the garden needed help. With the help of Eliza Greenman, Becka Gange, many community members we enriched the soil by sheet mulching the beds.
Sheet mulching is also known as composting in place and lasagna gardening. It involves layering different forms of carbon and nitrogen on top of the garden beds. After adding many layers of manure, seaweed, food scraps, leaves, and grass clippings to each of the beds, we covered each pile with cardboard and newspaper. Finally we added another layer of seaweed and
grass clippings to suppress weeds. We're hopeful that our soil will be in much better shape and full of worms in the spring! We'll be studying Colonial America in the spring. Should we try to plant a colonial garden? What would we plant in a colonial garden? What should we plant?
I loved doing the garden. Yes it was a lot of work but it payed off. On thanksgiving I used the purple potatoes we grew to make purple mashed potatoes! The whole family loved them.
ReplyDeleteFor the colonial garden we might want to have a whole day for colonial life based on the ways they used to live. Like gardening, eating, sleeping, and lots more!
I really enjoyed choosing what foods and flowers we wanted, and where to put them. It was also really fun to look at seed catalogs and pick the variety of the different foods and flowers we wanted, and thinking, "Do we want purple potatoes or normal?" It was also fun to see how different the varieties of the same food can be. I think altogether it was just a really fun project!
ReplyDeleteI think that doing a colonial garden is a really good idea! I remember when we did our colonial day, and how fun that was! I think what we would grow would depend on what we learned, and all the other things you have to consider when you start a garden!
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