sb country n news-my third garden

SB COUNTRY N NEWS-MY THIRD GARDEN
each thursday morning i load up my milk crate of
organic garden stuff in case i need to use any of them
also i usually will have a bucket of kitchen scraps
that i donate to the school garden where i volunteer
each week
the kids will either dump the scraps into the worm bin
that sits in the garden or into the black composter
that was donated to them by a fellow alzheimers
committee volunteer

each thursday i with the teacher try to think of something
for the kids to do in the garden

since september they have planted several beds of
veggies fighting off varmints who wanted to eat it
well they did eat it all up several times
before thanks to online research i figured how to
put up a pvc wire cage system that keeps them out
the varmints that is

the kids have free range in the garden
they can eat the veggies whenever they want
in fact
it looks pretty eaten down right now
since they love to make kale or chard or lettuce tacos
using onions sweet peas different herbs in their
tacos
all from the garden

i told someone the other day
if you look at the sweet peas you see a lot of blooms
but no peas
the kids eat the peas as soon as they start growing
as i told the teacher
im ok with that

last week this bed had become overran with weeds
i had let them grow since i wasnt sure if they were
something planted before i started volunteering
some were weeds
some were seeded from other plants

the kids were giving the task of removing at least
10 weeds a piece
the weeds were fed to the worms in the worm composter
some of the kids liked weeding so much they just kept
on weeding
they havent read tom sawyer yet

the kids water the garden on thursday using the rainwater
from their rainwater tanks i installed in the fall thanks to
a tank donation and a grant

today we plan to weed another bed
the herb bed thats overran with weeds
and mint
if you plant mint in your garden
you will eventually have only a mint garden
plant them in pots

im speaking from experience

the other half of the garden area is an outside play area
once they do the garden stuff they can go play there

there are no playground slides or swings or bars
just
stuff
like
the limbs trimmed down from a tree out front
the kids hauled them around to the play area
theyve made a large teepee and a see saw
some made fairy traps
i threw a long black flexible drain tube thats 10 ft long
in there
it sometimes operates as a tunnel or funnel or a conduit
or talking piece or whatever they decide to use it for

i had the yard folks dump a large pile of leaves in
the corner
these leaves are used in the compost
to cover up mud
to jump in
to play in

someone found a tree that was cut down
it was cut in segments that stood on end so the kids
could sit on them in a ring

last week
i told the kids that a gopher had dug a deep hole in front
of the rainwater tanks
could they fill it up
well getting real creative
they packed the hole full of dirt
filled the trench up in front of the tanks
then
proceeded to cover up the area with stuff from the yard
so the gopher would not ever get out

creative
thats what this area allows them to be

sort of
like when we grew up
we played with sticks and limbs and cans
and created stuff

if you ask the kids they will say
coming out to the garden and the play area
is the highlight of the week

the organicgreen doctor