Stewart Garden Facebook Page

Hello everyone, We are a community garden and today we got a message from a student in the Tacoma school District and he sent us a message with this link for the page on Facebook. we are very suprised that he would do this for us and also he sent us a clip.  we our glad for our garden we couldn't have done without the school's aproval and his help. have a good winter break.

Stewart Garden Page

here is a clip from the commerical that we created with him.



here is the student: Dakhota Gray a old bridge from last semester.

Information Card Brainstorm and Concept Mapping

Hunter just starting his information card for the garden. His sign will inform people about raingardens

David is researching Worm Gardens and Jeremy is researching  Trash and Litter

Here is a concept map about a information card/sign all about strawberries by \Angela

Practice MSP and Informational Cards

Today we went over the practice MSP problem that we worked on last week. Most of us would have done really well had we actually read the questions and did what they asked. Now our homework for the week is to improve, redo and make better our answers to the Research and Explore prompt we struggle with.

It asked us about a problem that is near and dear to our hearts: How to get rid of puddles in the garden.
We then had to brainstorm types of research we would do before solving the problems
We also had to list possible solution ideas to the problem.

We also worked on our Information Cards

Info Card  Ideas:

Rain Gardens,

 Green Houses,

Composting,

Worm Gardens,

Worms

Fertilizers, Pesticides,

Organic Farming

 Tomatoes, Raspberries, Carrots, Celery, Lettuce, Cabbage, Garlic, Blackberries, Mint, Artichokes, Onions, Radishes, Kale, Zucchini, Cucumbers, Pumpkins, Squash, Tomotillos, Any Flower, Beans, Peas, or any other veggie or fruit.

Sunny Winter Work Day

Despite the cold temperatures, we are still getting lettuce, cilantro, radishes, spinach, chard and onions to grow

a well weeded onion patch

picking up piles of yard waste

a winter cabbage still hanging on

worm garden doing good, we added some Brussel sprouts and other rotting garden waste

fall work day

not a lot of things to do out in the garden these days except for pick up, clean up, re weed, pull deadheads, and mulch leaves into the ground, with the holidays coming up we don't have that many clean up days before christmas break. Today was a good hard working but slimy day ! 

 David picking up litter

 Kondalia, Fransisco, Pawn, Azaziah moving dirt

 Mr. I and Coree putting leaves on the beds

 Resharn, and Seth pulling weeds

Jeremy picking up piles of dead plants

Frost/Weather Death Class Investigation

What Killed the Plants?                                                                                Name                                                 

Over the weekend a large number of plants died and turned brown. Our job is to determine why this happened.

Investigative Question: What was the probable cause for the death of certain types of plants in our garden.

Hypothesis: We think (weather, temperature, freezing/frost, insects, mushrooms, no sunlight) Killed the Plants over the last week.

Procedure:

MV: The environment

CV: Multiple beds of plants

RV: Plants are alive or dead

1.)   Go outside, investigate plants alive and not alive after the weekend.

2.)   Record observations of the living and dead plants in garden

3.)   Investigate other factors such as types of plants, weather etc.

4.)   Discuss findings with class.

DATA:

Plant Type	Alive: With Observations	Dead: With Observations
Tomatoes		Plants brown and mushy
Squash		ditto
Onion	Tips had damage
Mint	some alive	some dying
Zucchini		brown and dying
Basil		brown and dried up
ALL NEW STARTS	peas, beats, lettuce, cilantro, onions,
Broccoli	doing fine
Kale	doing fine
Cabbage	doing fine
Peppers		brown and mushy

Discussion Questions:

1.) What kinds of plants died? What is similar about them?

 Plants planted in the summer are dying, plants with fruits (zucchini, tomato, squash, beans), 

2.) What kinds of plants lived? What is similar about them?

plants planted recently (lettuce, cilantro, peas, radishes), leafy plants like kale and cabbage, root plants like carrots, beats, onions

3.) What weather events (Precipitation, Temperature, Sunlight, Seasons) have taken place in the last week that may contribute to plant death?  First big frost on Saturday, followed by lots of rain, less and less sunlight

CONCLUSION Make a final conclusion about which plants died and why based on your observations and discussions. (May use back).

certain plants are planted in certain seasons and can't grow in others

some plants have fruits because they only live for one year

some plants can live for more than one year

frost kills many fruiting plants

Pulling Weeds in the Cold

Some of us worked, some of us didn't. It was chilly and fun. 

Pulling weeds out of the onion patch

Angela rocking the weed pulling without gloves

Tres Amigos y el Capitan Flojo (Lazy)

Pulling old tomatoes

inside our warm and happy greenhouse

Winter is coming

 Today was the first sigh of winter coming there was frost on the ground and the temperature has drop. Hopefully our produce grows enough to be harvested       

Mr. Iverson and David working on one of the green houses

Hunter pouring fresh soil into the empty garden beds

Everybody doing their own individual jobs to help the garden

Jeremy picking up trash while the others work on the 

Maurico, David, and Hunter fixing up the worm bin.

 Jeremy picking up the litter 

 the worms are doing good :)

 raking the beds clean

taking out the flowers

Resharn  heading to the compost bins 

Quiet Day:

Today we read aloud There's A Hair In My Dirt By Gary Larson. A funny book about how nature is looked at by humans and how in the end the worm is the hero of the forest.

We watched a few documentaries about garden around the world.

Most of the 8th graders were on a field trip and it was raining really hard so we had a nice and peaceful day.

Bye~!

Cleaning Up Dead Plants

It is fall again and how do we know it? The pond is finally starting to fill up slowly after all that heavy rain this weekend. 

 We spent all period clearing our beds of plants (mostly tomatoes) and we are only 1/4 of the way done.

 Whatever was in the air today people felt like taking the easy way out and trashing the shed. I guess we have an extra job of cleaning this mess up tomorrow.

We pulled out a ton of tomatoes today and didn't even get started raking the beds.

Garden Team 2012 Class Photos~!

Fall Chores: Worm Garden, Leaves, Harvest, Weeds

Today we got out in the crisp fall air and took care of our worms adding tomatoes, leaves and shredded paper.

We also started raking leaves for our compost bins: 2 browns to 1 green they say and after all the dead plants we put in there we need some brown power... :)

We are still getting a few peppers and tomatoes and odds n ends.\

lettuce sprouts yeah!

Azaziah pulling pesky weeds...again

can't believe how much stuff is growing in this weather!

radish sprouts!

artichoke that has flowered and will go to seed

yellow cuchs or zuchs or squash of some type

overlooked zucchini! 

Kelly from UWT Worm Garden Presentaion

Today Kelley came by and talked to us about worm gardens.

We talked about the anatomy of the worm, how they live, what they eat, how much water they need and appropriate foods to feed them (and what to stay away from).

Below are photos of her cool see through compost bin so we could see the decomposition in action.

We also got to meet all the isopods and other insects that help in the composting process.