weed harvest

As you can see the extreme heat we’ve been experiencing in Vermont has brought on the weeds. Our terrific Youth Services crew was here to help tackle them on Thursday morning. Their last day is this Wednesday. What will we do without their help? They’ve worked hard at keeping everything weeded when they’re here, one morning a week for  six weeks. While working they’ve shared their hopes and dreams as they look ahead to post high school years. I’m glad they’re still young enough to love running through the sprinkler to cool off!

Westminster summer campers will also be leaving soon. They were out all afternoon helping to harvest, weed and mulch the new beans. Jay found a beautiful spider on the raspberries. We’ll have to identify it. Do you have any ideas?
We got our row of September beans mulched with newspaper and hay before the thunderstorms moved in. Whew!

That shy kitty from last week, came back to visit with his family. Below are Jean and her children, Jedda and Christopher with Baby Duke.

Mareena and Dominic cool off in the sprinkler

a peek at the first beans

mulch straw on new beans

mulching before the rain

Jay’s spider

garden neighbors and friends

harvesting kale

weighing kale

washing

de-ribbing

stamp sized pieces

measuring

eating kale salad

yummy kale

Westminster School summer campers were given the full experience of making massaged kale salad (see recipe, previous post). We had a harvest crew out in the garden early enough to beat the blistering heat. They knew that we were making four times the recipe so they needed 4 pounds of kale. I chose the smooth rather than the curly leaf kale. Children had to figure out how to subtract the weight of the basket from the weight of the scale as they piled on their leaves. Afterward, we brought the kale inside, where it was washed and de-ribbed before being cut into postage stamp pieces. (We donated the tough ribs to Snorty, our principal’s pig.) By the way, with correct instruction and supervision, children are easily able to use knives for this project.
The next fun part was reading the rest of the recipe. One of our campers multiplied fractions like 1/3, by 4 and then the measurers were off, adding olive oil, lemon juice and soy sauce to the bowl of chopped kale. I roasted the seeds at home to save time. We took our kale salad outside for the massaging, and we timed campers as they worked their gloved hands through it, breaking down the kale fibers. 10 minutes and we were done~~although there were plenty of campers who could have kept going. The final touch was the addition of three peeled, sectioned and chunked oranges. The sweet orangey flavor provides just the right contrast to the salty, sesame sourness of the rest of the ingredients. Campers lined up to taste their creation. When introducing new foods there can’t be anything more important than direct participation in their assemblage. Participation = appreciation. There is one more helpful addition to new food introduction: a willing adult or child skilled in drama to make a huge big deal of how goood that first bite was. Some children asked for 5th helpings! I consider this first foray into kale eating a great success. Next on the menu: kale chips!

Our school garden is a recreational area for many neighbors, including a very shy fat orange kitty who almost ventured close enough to say ‘hello,’ yesterday morning when my friend Emmy, came along to harvest some kale with me. We brought the kale home to my kitchen for a dry run preparation of massaged kale salad. I think the kids at camp will enjoy making and tasting this yummy way to eat kale.
While we were in the garden, Emmy posed for a picture under the arbor. By next September, when school begins, this arbor will be covered with morning glories. The traditional viny entrance to our garden goes back twenty years to a time when parents put together an arbor of tree boughs to support it. Then one year we had a student in our class whose father was an imaginative plumber. Since that time his sculptural pipe arbor has graced our garden entrance.
Yesterday the garden was also visited by a few generations of garden alums, friends and their babies. The boys (triplets) were engaged in discovering what was left of our spring raspberries. For little ones, they were very persistent. One of the boys had fun investigating a zucchini until mom intervened. Darn!

MASSAGED KALE SALAD RECIPE (Suitable for many diets, including the ‘Paleo’)
1 lb. kale (de-ribbed and cut into 1” sq. bits)
Roast:
¼ c. raw sunflower seeds
¼ c. raw sesame seeds
¼ c. raw pumpkin seeds (Irene left out the pepitos)
Slice and Measure:
½ med.red onion sliced thinly
1/6 c. Braggs or soy
1/3 c. lemon
1/3 c. olive oil
Combine and massage above ingred. for 10 min.
Add any:
avocado chunks
pomegranate seeds
fennel slices
clementines or orange chunks

Solomon’s zuke.

Emmy under the arbor.

foraging for raspberries

new friends and alums of the Westminster School Garden

examining a zucchini up close

Last night we had enough rain to keep the garden plants happy~~especially the weeds. The tomato plants are all staked and suckered. Children wandering through the garden paths can now easily find the “lightbulb” yellow pear tomatoes. At recess, a few summer school campers wandered by to ask what was ready for picking. I made a deal with them: they could pick a red ripe raspberry for every weed they put into my weed basket (roots and all). This kept them busy and interested for a while.
Then they began discovering the ripening zucchinis, cukes, and lettuce. The children asked whether they could bring some of these to the school chef, Kim Kinney. She’ll use them tomorrow for a salad at lunchtime. Kim feeds about 70 campers a day when camp is in session.
One child will bring a few zucchinis home with her. She thought her mom might use them in a stew for supper tonight.
The beans that students planted last week are beginning to peek out from the ground. Some are rather thickly sewn. I’ll see whether they’ll take to being transplanted. I transplanted some carrot seedlings today. I think the soil is moist enough to support them.
Even one of our staff teachers came out after camp to help weed. YAY. What a great place to grow!

Our 65 donated tomato plants are flourishing. The  tiny new tomatoes, snuggled under leaves and vines are looking for sunlight and air. I went out on my own to begin the process of suckering a few of them, armed with  elementary school scissors. Tomatoes are naturally  vining crops. If you have the space and the patience, you can just let them vine out and spread all over the garden. My preference is to cut back all unnecessary branches (suckers) on each plant and to select a few strong ones to tie to a stake. The school scissors lasted for about five minutes before cracking in half!

I went to my local Agway and found the tools I was looking for. There were a variety of products available for attaching tomato vines to stakes at Agway. Some were labeled, “hazardous.” Some were twist ties with wire in them. I chose Eaton Brothers natural jute twine. I wanted the greenest and safest product for our organic garden. I also chose a set of heavy duty clippers for suckering.
By far the most important treasure I brought away from Agway was my chance encounter with a Westminster School parent and her daughter who just happened to be shopping there at the same time that I was. When I told them about our 65 tomato plants, they said they’d meet me at the garden to help out. We had such a good time getting to know each other the next day. I found two true garden friends. They promised to come back and help some more later in the week.

 Late June and early July are weed-fest times for our school garden. The temperature here in Vermont has been in the high 80’s for days….not a cloud in the sky. Everything grows and grows! At night the temperature drops to a very comfortable 50 degrees. The crops and the weeds in our garden are competing for first place. I was a bit overwhelmed when I  came back to our garden after 2 weeks away.  Discovering onion sets and bean plants nestled amongst the 2 foot high weeds was like going on an archeological dig. Thank goodness for our rototiller. It helped wipe out the larger spots where nothing had been planted and where the mulching was scarce. We need to round up  a cadre of community members to help with garden maintenance.

The summer camp program began this week and the kids were eager to come out to the garden to help. Early raspberries growing on the border are a huge enticement. Today some students discovered the first zucchinis, ready to harvest. They each took a taste of them right there as soon as they picked them. Some liked the crunchy raw zucchini and some didn’t. It always helps when there is enthusiastic modeling of how yummy they are. I can become very dramatic when sampling fresh produce for an audience of children. The campers also brought lettuce back to the cook at school. It will be used for their lunch today! So many great conversations ensued about grandma’s garden or how much dad loves to garden  as the 6 to 12 year olds helped each other pull weeds. Some great plant identification occurred.

The Youth Services group lent their muscle this morning. What  great crew. They’ll be visiting to help out in the garden on Thursdays until the first week in August. They helped bang down stakes, tie tomatoes, hoe potatoes and weed, weed, weed. Harlow Farm Stand gave us some ‘gone by’ marigolds and we filled in a bare spot with a row of them. We think we identified a Tomato Horn Worm Moth and we made short work of it.