Garden planted!

Forget about the freezing nights! Warm weather is coming sooner or later, and it's time to plant spring crops at the Lake View Elementary School 4G: the Great Green Growing Garden!

Parents Zivile Kudzin, Melissa Mooney and Vesna Kovach came to work with the students of the Green Garden Team.

We planted peas, spinach, purple and pink radishes and lettuces as our early spring crop.

Nhabee Her, on the Lake View faculty, is leading the very first 4G Jicama Project. He's been growing and enjoying jicama for several years and is sharing his expertise with the school. Jicama is a favorite vegetable in the cuisines of South Asia.

We built dogwood trellises for the peas. Wendy Gasch brought the lovely dogwood branches from a project she worked on earlier this month. She also donated a sack of organic fertilizer.

The kids worked hard putting down landscape fabric and, over that, wood chips to make an attractive space around and between the raised beds. They literally moved a mountain during this workday: a mountain of wood chips that the school district delivered a few days ago, all the way from the parking lot to its garden destination, one wheelbarrow full at a time. A lot of good, hard work!

Rained-out planting

Planting was scheduled for this morning, before the kids got out at 11:30 for Spring Break. Our plans were thwarted starting around 3 a.m. when lightning split the skies and the rain clouds poured forth upon us, continuing all day.

Better luck in a week or so, when the kids get back in April!

A clean sweep for spring

Cleanup day was AWESOME! About 20 Green Team kids came out and worked the garden with the most enthusiasm, focus and sustained drive I have seen in any group of kids yet! The garden project just keeps getting better and better. Thanks, Susie, for leading this great group!

Three parents were able to attend -- me, Zivile Kudzin and Melissa Mooney. For nearly two hours, we led the kids, who came out in two shifts or about 10 each, in cleaning up the beds from debris like rocks and acorns, raking leaves and filling the beds with the pile of finished compost that was beside it. We mixed in a sack of organic fertilizer and leveled it all off.

The first thing we all did, though, was eat up all the spinach that had sprung up this spring from the seeds we'd planted last fall. :) After that impromptu snack time we got to work!

Trip to Wisconsin Gold Harvest

It's not exactly related to the 4G garden, but it does relate to green and growing edible things at Lake View: We took a trip out to the Wisconsin Gold Harvest farm to buy popcorn directly from the wonderful farm family that grows it. Early in 2011, we transitioned from food-service popcorn packs laden with colors, flavors and assorted artificial ingredients to locally grown popcorn popped only with pure, expeller-pressed, sustainably grown, coconut oil from family farms in the Philipines and pure salt.

The farmers, Colleen and Carl, gave us a warm and gracious welcome. We toured the farm and the popcorn storage and packaging facilities, met the dogs, saw the harvesting equipment, and even received gifts for both children -- home-grown pumpkins in time for Halloween. We drove home happy with 100 pounds of popcorn, enough for two Popcorn Days at Lake View!

Fall garden cleanup and prep

Parent volunteers and lots of Green Teamers came out to work on the garden. Out with the old, in with the new! We pulled out all the scraggly old tomato plants and still-lush pepper plants that didn't yield much this year, but sure did look great.

The students worked very hard moving tons of earth into the brand-new beds that parents built a few weekends ago. Now we have a total of EIGHT raised beds!

Lush growth at the 4G

First summer for 4G