OSPI STEM LIGHTHOUSE SCHOOL!!!!!!

Just a quick shout out to OSPI for their awesome support of all that we are doing to bring STEM curriculum and learning opportunities to our community here at Stewart.

$20,000 dollars will go a long way for our school. Can't wait to see how our school will be able to put it to use!

THE STEWART COMMUNITY GARDEN THANKS YOU!!!!!!

We'll be off for a while...

We will be taking a break from the community garden for Christmas. We will have one week of first semester left when we get back from break. January term will follow for 3 weeks (of no gardening) and then second semester will begin with a new cast of gardeners. We will do our best to keep you posted on any news.

From all of us here at the SCG, have a happy holiday.

PS a garden plot makes a great Christmas gift!

Cold Day But Hard Working

Weed with the hula hoe
dalante

Pick up piles of debris between garden beds take to  compost
robert

get leaves for compost
kameron

pick up plant material from compost pile and put in bins
russell

litter pick up
tiffany and amaya

homework
javier, andrew, jeremiah, tiffanee, sara








       Andrew and Javier Picking up trash

This Is Andrew & Javier Picking Up Litter

This Is a Sign That Was Made During
 Januray MiniTerm 2011

A Days: What the Garden Means to Me

Brittany
I love the garden.
The Garden means a lot to me because it shows where food comes from and I know it is fresh

Frank L.
I like it in gardening, doing jobs to pass the time, helping, supporting the S.C.G

Jaeden R.
I like to do construction work like cutting wood and collecting worms.

Spencer S.
SCG is fun and it is cool that we are helping so many people

Hererra
SCG means fun, good outdoor activity, dirty, good for the community, giving, good group work, food!

Michael T
I think this class is fun and cool. This is my third favorite class.

Cody P.
SCG means being able to get outside and enjoy fresh air, rather than be stuck in a classroom. Also working in the garden allows me to contribute to something more meaningful

Mateo R
I love this class. My favorite part of this class is when it is sunny and we go out and dig weeds out and fix beds up.

Anonymous
SCG is the best elective class ever. Even though I'm new to the work, Garden Class has made me think of making a garden in my backyard, though it would mean cutting down my pear tree (which is sick anyway). I want my very own garden to work on. Thanks SCG and MR. Iverson

Anonymous
SCG to me it means SUPER COOL GARDEN. It is like this becuase gardening is super cool.

Mackenna P
I like to help out the community as much as I can.

Jobs Today
Digging holes for info posts (Robert, Russell, Daniel, Fidel)
"The ground was soft and moist which helped with our digging. We got 4 or 5 holes dug"

Making Info Signs "no progress

Turning Compost over (Amaya)
"It went good..."

Picking Up Litter around school (Javier Andrew)
"We got 80 plus pieces of litter"

Gathering Leaves for compost (Kameron, Tiffany)

"no report"

Moving Pulled Wildflower to raingarden (Mr. I and Amaya)
"I actually got all of them done."

Taking Pictures (Tiffanee)
"No comment"

Worm Gathering
"No progress"
Weeds
"No Progress"
 
Homework
Jeremiah-"Timeline of the Revolutionary War"
Sara "Finished my math homework"
Kamorah "Finished missing work and todays homework from Math"
Dalante "Finished my homework on decimals and mixed numbers"



This Is thee 7th Grade Boys digging holes for the info
signs up over the rain garden



This is Daniel & Robert Taking A Break From
Digging

Tiffany Bringing Leaves To Add To The Compost

Litter Facts

• 250 million tons of trash is generated each year in the U.S.
• 4.6 pounds of waste is created every day by the average person.
• Common litter includes cigarette butts, plastic bags, paper, candy wrappers, fast-food packaging, bottle caps, 6-pack can holders, glass bottles, and plastic straws.
• Men and women are equally likely to litter.
• People under age 15 are least likely to litter; people under the age of 25 are most likely to litter when in a group; and, people over the age of 25 are most likely to litter when alone.
• In one single day, nearly 7 million pounds of litter were removed from beaches, lakes, and streams.
• Animals from nearly 443 species are entangled in or ingest marine debris annually. The majority of these die from starvation, exhaustion, or infection.
• People litter because:
• there is a presence of other litter.
• it’s the easiest way to get rid of unwanted things.
• littering is acceptable by people who pay taxes to have someone else pick it up.
• dumping is a social activity we learned from our parents and passed on unconsciously to our children.

From http://www.everymondaymatters.com/

Some Handicap Accessible Garden Plan Sites.

http://www.chesavage.com/planterbox/


http://www.apparelyzed.com/accessible-gardens/accessible-garden.html

What B Days Say about Gardening...

Daniel M-
What I like about the community garden is that you feel like your at home because you have to do something calm like you dont gotta be rushed. In other classes. But yea, its cool to just get out of the class and go outside and be with friends and work and breath fresh air.

Javier A-
What I like about the garden is that it iuse to be just a large grass field and now it is a garden.
I like to go outside and work on a lot of fun things too.

Fidel S-
What I like about the community garden is that I have it at the end of the day and I can just let out some of my energy and get some fresh air.

Russell-
My favorite thing about our garden class is that we get to go outside and work with the tools. My last reason is that we take pics of our garden and we have ducks in the pond!

Sara C-
My favorite things to do in the this class is to work at planting suff. I wish we could grow trees.

Kameron-
My favorite thing about the garden is the plants giving off oxygen

Amaya-
I like gardening because its fut to go outside at the endof the day. Also to not have to stay inside the whole time. Its so great to be able to not have to do homework the whole time and to have a nice teacher.

Robert-
My favorite thing in gardening  is the hands on work and using tools. I also enjoy a breath of fresh air from the outside.

Tiffany V-
I like how I can get on my fee and go outside instead of staying in a classroom. It makes me feel happy to let out my energy.

McKayla
I like the garden because you get to go ouside at the end of a long school day and let out your energy. It makes me feel happy because I can go outside.

Andrew
What I like about gardening is I get to help out the community and I learn about being in a garden. During break I'm buying the stuff to make a garden to be my moms xmas present. Thank you Mr. Iverson for teaching me about gardens.

James
The garden is a place where I can relax and work at the same time. Its a place where I can go outside and garden at the end of the day.

Dalante
When I am in the garden I like to plant and help out. even though I'm  not always on task thats what I like to do. I also like walk around and see what other people are doing in the garden.

George Washington's Ivy!

While collecting litter today Javier and Andrew discovered this little ivy plant with a little plaque.

here is George Washington's ivy brought to Stewart Middle School as a gift by the class of 1932.

this plaque informs us that the ivy was brought from George Washington's home in Mt. Vernon in 1932 to commemorate his 200th (bicentennial) birthday.

Andrew and Javier were so inspired by this little piece of history that they decided to go out into the school and investigate other historical landmarks around the building.

Javier also thought that we should transplant the ivy and then sell it as a fundraiser. Mr. Iverson said that we should transplant parts of it and put it near our upper fence of the garden as decoration.

Even Stewart is full of suprises.

GARDEN SIGN DAY!

Today we took a break from the cold weather outside and continued to make one page info signs and warnings for the garden.

Some of the signs included:

James: Raingarden
Tiffany and McKayla: Stay out of our beds
Jeremiah: Don't Smash our Plants
Sara: Black Berries (in progress)
Kamorah: Respect our garden space (in progress)
Amaya: Raingarden (in progress)

Others worked on homework.

It was a chilly day outside and a chill day inside.

Stay warm out there from your friends at the SCG!

Grantwork, Info Trail posters, and homework.

Today was mostly an inside day. Mr. Hoover and Mr. Iverson started downloading and filling out some upcoming grants that need to get completed soon.

Frank, Patrick, Frankie, Brittany and others were making informative posters to laminate and place on our Raingarden info Trail.

Patrick and Mikey worked on moving some composted woodchips to the Raingarden Trail.

Other students took the time to get caught up on homework.

Sorry that we didn't take any photos today but we were busy working inside.

Worms and Leaves and Composting Teams

Amaya holding up the wiggly gold a.k.a. worms for the compost

Kameron supplies the dead leaves that will eventually become...
worm food!

Tiffany and Amaya working as a team to locate our worm friends.
The technique we learned from our A Day Friend's instructional video below

WORM WARRIORS. collecting our favorite composting companions

Today we developed a new method for worm collecting. Now that our new compost bins are complete its really important for us to add some worms to aid in the decomposition of all the dead material we add to it as the year progresses.


We also watched a really cool youtube video of the community garden situation in Juneau

http://youtu.be/uB8iNW3dh3s

Building a winter Cold Bed Greenhouse and other winter chores

I was cutting some PVC tubes to a certain length

The archway towards our mini green house, we drilled holes in the raised bed,
then we put in rebar, then we connected the PVC with 'T' connectors

Mr. Hoover and Mr. Iverson gently connect the fragile middle section
while trying to avoid certain death by PVC whipping.
Mr. Hoover almost got a PVC to the Face when the cold snapped the plastic

Mr. Iverson connecting the cross/roof PVC beam
to the conectors in the middle of the arch ways

Ethan had a nasty job of cleaning up the muddy remains of the TAGRO soil

Here's how we organized our jobs today

Weeding grass around beds (upper left corner) AMAYA, KAMORAH,

Leaf/Compost Collection (Out front) MCKAYLA, TIFFANY

Worm Collection/worm garden research (ours isn’t working why?) JEREMIAH, SARA

Litter Pick Up (no fun but needed) TIFFANEE

TAGRO Soil Pile Sweep Up ETHAN

Took Pictures of the Greenhouse building: DALANTE, JAMES

COLD BEDS: DANIEL
Moving Computers for Panther Center: Javier and Andrew

Cedar Post Recycled Compost bins complete!

Sometimes we mess up but a simple re-drill and it was all fixed up.

Frank drilling one of the last holes in the cedar posts.
One final drive of the rebar down into the ground and these compost bins are done.
Thank you to Mr. Schwanger for letting us use the drills!

Rain rain rain :(

it rained so much today that we were barely out side. But we did get work done, we pulled out weeds that we don't need in our garden, people were really really wet and we did not like it.

Our rain garden had a huge leak so our boss Mr Iverson fixed it by adding sand and rocks to create a little dam. Mr Iverson fixed the dam problem, hahah he likes corny jokes.



Tiffany & Robert adding leaves to our new compost ben.



Fidel in the wet rain dumping leaves in the compost ben.

We planned out our plans for next week and we have some grant people coming to check out our garden. We come so far that if we had a sprinkler sistem and a green house we can really get some people from the community to help us with filling our garden.

Skipper and Lucy. Our Ducks have come home.

We can't be certain but the same ducks that visited us last year may have returned to our little pond of mud, grass, and aquatic organisms. A male and a female mallard scared us more than we scared them as we accidentally distrubed them in the pond.

although there isn't a lot of standing water there is enough for a a few ducks to find some lunch

the day wasn't a total success, someone put a bag and cigarette buts in the compost bins.
what a shame.
we picked them out one by one.

THEN AND NOW! AMAZING TRANSITION IN ONLY 9 months

Just following J-Term The Rain Garden started to fill in.
We planted wild flowers to attract pollinators.

It took several dumptrucks full of woodchips just to get the area surrounding the garden
in shape to be able to walk around

Close up of the virgin rain garden.

Our very first woodchip path leading us to the muddy hill
that would soon become our garden

Just after harvest this fall. As you can see the raingarden
and the whole garden are completely different with life thriving all around!

Almost an Identical shot from above but 9 months later. WOW!

Garden in full swing from top looking back at school

Our awesome garden sign that Nate Herth's summer school program made for us

The Schwanger family harvesting their various potatoes

One of our many fall harvests! we still have a lot of it frozen and ready to eat!

Compost bin progress, the last load of tagro, garden room computers online!

Although we don't have any photos today we got a lot done...well some of us.

Some people worked clearing the last of the Tagro pile its all gone!

Mr. I and Dalante got a couple more boards up on the big compost bin before the construction math class needed the drills back

Beds continued to get raked.

Some garden class members said that they were going to stay inside and "work on homework" only to find them playing Cool Math on the computers...Autonomy Skills?

Tonight is Essential Elements night we will be showing off our photos and blog and handing out pamphlets to try and sell some garden plots for the year. SOTA and SAMI are coming so wish us good luck!

Homeworking, Anti Vandalisming, Composting, Dirt Moving Awesome Kids

Today we again broke up into homework make up squad and working outside crew. Inside people got caught up on missing work from other classes and some people worked on outside jobs. We are still dealing with littering, vandalism, and general immature stupidity. BUT we will press on because one day we will have a beautiful garden full of awesome people and growing plants and food that we share with each other as we learn how to be cool garden masters!

Yay someone stole the top of our compost!!!!! Can you smell the Sarcasm

What kind of a sick person vandalizes a donated raspberry plant growing in a handi-cap garden?

Talon and Spencer slaving away to finish our second compost bin

Herrera and Patrick getting Tagro Potting Soil Mix to fill up beds that have sunken over the last year

A Day Off

Today we took a day off to look at our school grades, make up some missing work in other classes, and learn a little math with partners and tutors. We'll be back on Thursday with a full report hopefully. Garden is doing fine.

Love B Days

we did complete about 10 missing assignments though!

A Days no longer. WE ARE BEAST MODE JOE JOES.

Today we came up with a name for our team and voted on it: Beast Mode Joe Joes. Basically to work and dominate everything is called going "Beast" so this team exists in a MODE of Beast and we like Joe Joes as a snack.

Also, we had some more vandalism in the garden. Destroyed raspberries that were recently donated by our UWT friends were a sad sight to see. Also a bunch of swiss chard, an artichoke (not avocado) and some other plants were destroyed along with dog poo and garbage litter. Here is a video

University of Washington Tacoma Visit

Kelly Hatfield-Burmaz from the UWT Giving Garden and Greenhouse visited today. We gave her a tour and she gave us a whole lot of cool ideas for our garden. She also brought us two Raspberry plants that she said would spread like wildfire.

Here are some of the ideas:
Donating to the Tacoma Rescue Mission
Asking the homeless what they WANT us to grow in our giving garden for their food
They can do starts for us in their greenhouse and donate starts and seeds and rescue plants to us
She gave us ideas of how to start our worm garden!
We talked about field trips and work trading
We are both learning about winter cold bed gardens
She said Kale, Mint and Butter Lettuce are great for right now to plant

Here is a up close photo of our pond, see if you can spot the water mites.

Butternut Squash, Leaves for compost, and more littering.

Sadly, our littering public service announcement didn't stop the littering. More garbage was found today than ever before. Sad.

Cutting up squash for soup

Ethan found a recipe online that we'll try next week

2 tablespoons butter 2 large leeks (white and pale green parts only), chopped 1 large onion, chopped 1 large potato, peeled and cubed 2 cups cubed butternut squash 1 cup diced carrots 1 Granny Smith apple, peeled, cored, and sliced 1/4-inch thick 1 quart chicken stock 1/4 cup dry white wine (optional) 1/2 cup light cream 1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg salt and pepper to taste 2 tablespoons chopped chives Directions Melt butter in a large pot over medium heat. Stir in leeks and onions, and cook until the onion softens and turns translucent, about 5 minutes. Add potato, squash, carrots, apple, and chicken stock. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat to medium-low, cover, and simmer until the vegetables are soft, about 20 minutes.


adding dirt and raking beds in preparation for the winter



Carefully puree the soup in batches in a blender, or use a stick blender to puree the soup right in the pot. Once the soup has been pureed, return it to the pot and stir in wine and cream. Season with nutmeg, salt, and pepper; simmer gently for 5 minutes. Ladle into bowls and garnish with chopped chives.

Mr. I and the boys getting leaves to improve our compost that is brewing in our new compost bins

PLEASE STOP LITTERING!!!!!! Our First PSA

Today we took our first crack at making a public service announcement. Despite a small sneeze in the middle it actually went pretty well. The PSA is in response to all the crazy littering that has been taking place following the Halloween Holiday.

A Days totally redeem themselves.

Today we worked outside.

We laughed we wheelbarrowed we cried.

We pulled some weeds, they were denied

I asked Frank if he was working, he said "Yes..."
He lied.

Today we kicked garden butts

we worked and worked and busted our guts

some of the kids drove mr. I nuts

Using the last of our Tagro Potting Soil to fill up low beds, guess we need more.

Yesenia thought, "Why are middle schoolers so cruel?"

Ooooooooh. Look at that BOSS Mr. Mateo and Mr. Mikey doing some landscaping

If this works expect more videos to come.

Compost bin and Autonomy Problems.

I guess its fitting that we only have  pictures of one of the jobs being worked on today considering we also had a high level of students off task today also. Maybe its Halloween, maybe its something else but unfortunately today we didn't get a whole lot accomplished.

Our First very rainy day...

But it didn't stop Tiffany from getting the job done

and it didn't stop Kameron from starting to install our rain garden

It didn't stop Robert from putting in two posts on the raingarden fence

it didn't stop the peas \Dalante planted from sprouting

and it didn't stop Mr. Hoover from helping out