The Adventures Begin: Gardening at Farragut

 

Yesterday, I set up the Lifetime Raised Garden Beds with Felix in about 10 minutes. As promised by the review, sturdy plastic parts that snap together and secure with connectors. Thanks to a tip from Alex at the Plant and the flexibility of Lake Street Landscape, 2 yards of beautiful garden mix were delivered by the early afternoon.  Will helped me pick up bags of gravel and a Mexican Mint Marigold last night.  What a busy last day of school...
After a lot of planning, seed starting, and shopping, we began gardening this morning.
I couldn't have been more excited than when I arrived to school about 7:40 am and found Jonathan and Miguel waiting in the parking lot.  All six gardeners arrived before start time.  What and awesome and reliable crew that Farragut has!

The first task, was centering the beds in front of the cement planters.. nothing like a little math practice early on the first day of summer!

Next, students added an inch of gravel to the raised beds.  Then, they moved 2 yards of garden mix soil from the courtyard entrance to the beds. This may not have been the most fun part of the morning.

We stopped for a water break and began to move plants from my classroom to the courtyard.  We stopped in the breezeway to admire our work:

Ana, Maria, and Jessica have been reading Mel Bartholomew's Square Foot Gardening, so they came with a rough plan of how to layout the crops.  We decide upon 1 bed for herbs, 1 bed of peppers, and tomatoes, and 1 bed of peppers, a cucumber, a zucchini (for flor de calabaza).  Here's a graphic from Square Foot Gardening:
The herbs we planted today are: bee balm, lemon grass, mexican mint marigold, rue, papalo, epazote, basil, cilantro, and lemon balm.  We planted several varieties of peppers (though I think Habanero was the favored plant!) and tomatoes.

At the end of the morning, we gave everything a good watering and headed home.  Next steps:  Building a Compost Bin and working on a raised bed of native plants (perennials) in a shady region of the courtyard.