Summer Garden Kick-Off

On Friday, June 5, 2009, parents, students, teachers, and friends of Casey Elementary met for a summer orientation and preview of summer gardening events. In the photo above, Melanie Allen prepared tomatoes from the farmer's market with basil from our garden! Serenity Luckett (above right), gave a history of the garden project and introduced future summer activities. Since Casey is a creative arts school, we especially hope to encourage students and families to create art inspired by the garden. Gardening + Art = gARTening!

Andy Williamson (camera-man in bottom left corner), from Mississippi Public Broadcasting's Mississippi Roads, is following the Casey Garden throughout the summer to produce a show about gardening in schools. He hopes that his piece will inspire other schools to catch the gardening bug. Mr. Williamson also filmed footage at garden activities during the Casey Family Arts Festival and when students harvested lettuce and spinach for a teacher appreciation salad during the last week of school.

During the orientation, Mrs. Allen helped the children label all plants, harvest vegetables that were ready, and plant new plants. We harvested onions, cabbages, Swiss chard, and pole beans that everyone could take home for cooking and eating. We also fed the Casey turtles some of the cabbage! We planted eggplant, watermelon, sunflowers, and cucumber plants.

As a final activity, Julie Owen helped students to plant their own pots with zinnia seeds and their own peat pellets with a squash seed for germinating at home. We encouraged all participants to monitor the progress of their seeds and sprouts with measurement and careful observation. Some of the squash seedlings may be transplanted to the Casey Garden in empty portions of the beds.

Students gathered outside of the "turtle courtyard" to watch the turtles munch away on cabbage leaves placed out for them only minutes before.

The next garden meeting is Wednesday, June 10, 2009, at noon. Please bring a picnic lunch and plenty of water to drink! We will be indoors for part of the meeting to make our own garden observation journals out of recycled materials. Please bring any empty cereal boxes you may have, magazines or newspaper photos of gardens, seed catalogs, or drawings that can be cut and pasted to decorate our covers.

If you are interested in participating in the Casey Garden, please post a comment below. We need families to take turns watering the garden each week. A tentative schedule for summer garden activities is listed below, but please be aware that events/dates may change as the summer progresses.

• June 5: Orientation, planting of seeds in individual pots as well as garden boxes,

• June 10: Regular picnic, make observation journals from recycled materials, art introduction

• June 17: Picnic and trip to Tougaloo garden
  

• June 24: Regular picnic day with book reading or garden activity

• July 1: Regular picnic day with book reading or garden activity

• July 8: Meet at Farmer's Market in Jackson, take tour of market and talk to farmers, each child buy one item, meet back at Casey for picnic and discussion about farmer's market

• July 15: Regular picnic day with book reading or garden activity

• July 22: Tour Mynelle Gardens and learn about flowers there
  

• July 29: Regular picnic day with book reading or garden activity

• August 5: Garden celebration with slide show and art presentations by kids. Teachers report August 6.
  

Also, check out this wonderful website full of resources and information about gardening with kids.

http://www.kidsgardening.com/

If you were at the garden on Friday, we would love to hear what you or your children thought about the day's activities. Please comment below!