July 22

The Pumpkin Plants Are Flowering

Here’s a quick update on the pumpkin patch at our school.  I checked the plants out yesterday and noticed a few things.  First, The plants have all grown.  Also, they seem to be more green.  Some of the leaves in the past weeks have been yellow.  I think they might have been watered too much.  I altered this a bit for both gardens.  Hopefully, that helped.  I still see some yellow discoloration in the leaf of some of the plants, but not much.  I have not seen as many leaves being eaten.  I put some slug bait down last week and that seemed to keep the slimy guys off for now.  Here’s a photo of one such creature I caught in our garden.

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This is a banana slug. It’s a native species for our state.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A new pest arrived this week and has been munching little holes in the leaves of the plants. Here’s a photo of a beetle I found on one of the leaves.  I’m not sure if it’s the culprit. Again, I’ll keep an eye on it.

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I found that the growth is still better in Garden 1 compared to Garden 2.  If you look carefully in the Garden 1 photo you can see some yellow coloring.  Those are the flowers that are starting to bloom.  Remember that the pumpkin fruit start as a flower.  Once it gets pollinated it will start to make the pumpkin fruit.  Do you recall how they get pollinated?  See the photos below.

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Garden 1

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Garden 2

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Lastly, I observes some interesting color on the leaves of one of the pumpkins in the 5 gallon buckets.  I’m not sure what it is exactly.  It might be nothing, or it could be the start of some sort of disease.  I’ll check back on it next week.

The courtyard to the school is generally closed during the month of July, but it might start opening up in August.  Stop by and check if you have time to see how the plants are progressing in person.

June 30

Sprouts and Vines

Well the irrigation has been installed and is hopefully keeping the pumpkins well hydrated. I guess the technical term is irrigated. We now have many plants coming up and adding more leaves to their stems. There was a distinct difference between the 2 gardens with germination.  Garden 1 had 29 of 32 seeds germinate, while Garden 2 had 21 of 33 seeds germinate.  Many students predicted that the sunlight was the key factor in germination rate.  What other factors could have played a role?

We may need to thin some soon. The teachers are checking in once in a while to make sure everything is growing well during the summer months.

Waiting for germination.

Waiting for germination.

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The first plant to germinate.

5th graders finished up the year well.  We worked hard to create a legacy crop that will be growing at the beginning of your 6th grade year.  Be sure to stop by to see how your hard work is paying off. Hopefully we have enough fruit to harvest for our 1st graders.

April 26

Garden Project: Step 3-Research

Okay.  We’ve decided to plant pumpkins.  We’ve followed some simple steps to get started.  Now it’s time to decide which type of pumpkins to plant.  Remember a few simple things…

  1. We want to plant something that is relatively small (5-10 pounds).  A vine will only be able to support so much fruit.  If we choose a larger variety, it may not produce as many pumpkins.  This doesn’t quite fit our goal.  We want to have enough pumpkins to harvest so that our primary classrooms can each have at least 1 to enjoy with their students.
  2. We want to try and select a plant that generates a high yield.  The yield refers to the number of pumpkins we can produce.
  3. We have a limited amount of growing space for pumpkins.  We need to consider the room each plant will require to get the optimum number of pumpkins in the space we are given.  So, the smaller the plant, the more plants we can grow.  This can be hard to picture.  You want to look for plants that can be planted at least 3-4 per hill.

Use the territorial seeds website to help you to decide which type of pumpkins we should plant.  Also, use the form your teacher provides to help guide your research.

 

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April 19

Garden Project: Step 1-Where does food come from?

If I ask where food comes from, they will probably say, “The grocery store.”  Sure, we often go to the grocery store to buy food that we later prepare and eat.  In fact, there are lots of stores we can go to buy food.  A few students will even say, “McDonalds!” or a restaurant.  But I wonder if any students will really ponder where it came from before finding its place on a store shelf, or a restaurant kitchen.  Recently, we’ve been learning more about nutrition, but not as much about our food resources.  Where do they come from? Here’s a link to a quick game you can play to begin to think about how complicated it can be.  Click on the Elementary Farm-to-Table Challenge.  Here’s another video link to help you actually see the Farm-to-Table Journey.  Click on the virtual field trip.

 

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