Today was another unseasonably hot day but a great day to be in the garden.  We were able to get our strawberry plants and some broccoli planted in our smaller Garden Club plot.  We also added carrots seeds in our larger plot.  A group went with Mrs. Stone to the Densmore side of the school to clean out a planter and prepare it for some cool weather flowers.  We also had a pleasant surprise.  Ms. Lisa and her husband made garden signs for us.  We will look forward to decorating them and displaying them in our garden.  We missed Ms. Silvia and Ms. Lisa.

Students were eager to start planting their cool weather garden.  Our weather has been unseasonably warm this year.  To start off with, we planted Cascadia Sugar Snap Peas under the bamboo and twine trellises we built. (We also finished making two more trellises.) The Snap Peas we will get to eat off the vine later this school year.  We also planted the flower "Sweet Peas" in six packs and will transplant later.  We don't eat the Sweet Peas pods. But the flowers will look and smell wonderful.  We also planted broccoli, tomatoes, and lettuce plants.  A big thanks to Ms. Lisa, Ms. Silvia, and Elias for donating plants.  We also check in on our caterpillars.  We couldn't believe how big our Monarch caterpillars have grown since last week. Before we could barely see them they were so tiny.  Now look at them.  

4th Grade Garden Club members and volunteers assembled more trellises out of bamboo and twine.  We also worked at removing weed and other debris out of the plots and smoothing them flat.  A couple Black Eyed Susan plants were replanted. Two kinds of caterpillars were brought to share with students by Ms. Silvia.  We will monitor how they change at our next meeting.  The weather has been very warm but we will start to plant our Cool Weather garden next week.

Fall is in the air.  Weather may, or may not, be cooling down just yet but we are preparing for our cool weather garden planting.  We also talked about knowing how to measure.  It is useful in the gardens. We measured what size trellis poles we would need.  We learned how to make a trellis for the sugar snap peas we plan to plant.  We used bamboo poles and twine and some zip ties.   We were able to build four.  Next week we will build some more.  Ms. Silvia brought us a container of worms.  We look forward to seeing if they ate all their grapes.  These worms are good for composting.