School gardens growing all over Albany

Posted on April 20, 2014 | Comments Off on School gardens growing all over Albany

This Saturday, April 26, is shaping up to be a big day for gardens at Albany schools.

It’s the first of two spring Family Days in the Garden at Myers Middle School. We’ll be getting ready for the coming growing season from 9 to 11 a.m. Kids and adults alike are more than welcome to join in.  We have some carpentry plans, would like to get some compost turned and no doubt will come up with a dozen more good reasons to get our hands dirty.

But Myers is hardly the only Albany school where gardeners and educators are eager to get planting. Our good friend Susan Fowler is inviting friends to Family Day in the Friendship Garden at Delaware Community School from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. on the same day.  And a fledgling garden group at Albany High, led by sophomore Liz John, is planning to build several raised beds to get growing going there from noon until 3 p.m.  A big thanks go to the master gardeners of the Cornell Cooperative Extension Service of Albany County, who have donated lumber for the project.

Have some time on the 26th and want to make a difference for students in Albany schools? Please lend a hand to one of these great projects.

—Bill Stoneman

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Posted in School garden

Contributing to teaching in our community

Posted on April 10, 2014 | Comments Off on Contributing to teaching in our community

It was a great pleasure to be a part of a Project Learning Tree workshop for Albany teachers and College of Saint Rose teaching students two weeks ago. The workshop was on school gardening and we hosted it at Myers Middle School. Great partners in the day-long program were the College of Saint Rose, the Albany Fund for Education and the state Department of Environmental Conservation.

Some of the response to our part in the workshop is enough to make us think we Continue reading →

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Posted in School garden, Teaching

Starting seeds in classrooms on the way

Posted on March 25, 2014 | Comments Off on Starting seeds in classrooms on the way
March mache

Mache started in our greenhouse in October is undaunted by many sub-zero nights this winter.

We are proud partners in an event this weekend that offers an opportunity to build more school relationships. We are hosting and participating in a workshop on Saturday for teachers in the Albany district and teaching students at the College of Saint Rose. The workshop, presented by Project Learning Tree, which supports environmental education nationwide, will focus on school gardening.

We will show folks around the space that we tend and talk about challenges and Continue reading →

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Posted in Teaching, Uncategorized

Spring and summer’s garden is taking shape

Posted on March 14, 2014 | Comments Off on Spring and summer’s garden is taking shape

We avoid a number of outdoor issues when we start seeds and nurture small plants indoors: Heavy rain and lashing winds don’t bother as at all. And no one walks off with almost-ready-to-harvest watermelons.

We face other hazards, however, such as occasional inability to visit our plants. Continue reading →

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Posted in Four-season growing, School garden, Teaching

Start your garden with High Mowing Organic Seeds

Posted on February 25, 2014 | Comments Off on Start your garden with High Mowing Organic Seeds

top-seed-banner3

Put spring on your calendar and contribute to the Vegetable Project by planning a garden with High Mowing Organic Seeds.  Your purchase of certified organic seeds helps raise money for the Vegetable Continue reading →

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Posted in School garden

Spring is just around the corner

Posted on February 5, 2014 | Comments Off on Spring is just around the corner

A pile of snow on the ground today doesn’t change the fact that spring is on the way. And we are getting ready for it.

High Mowing seed packs

We have been starting seeds indoors for three weeks now, not so much to produce plants that will go outdoors as to put our Garden Club students through some important paces – noting in our journal what we plant, watering, carefully observing when we experiment, such as by trying the same seeds in different media. We’re also getting ready for spring by thinking now about what

Continue reading →

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Posted in School garden, Teaching

In search of accurate pH measurement

Posted on January 30, 2014 | Comments Off on In search of accurate pH measurement

When you hold a ruler against something you need to measure, you can be sure that the six-inch mark really is six inches from an end of the ruler. It isn’t so easy, however, to measure soil pH.pH testing tools

We discovered in the fall that different tools sometimes produce starkly different results with a single sample of soil. In one instance, we came up with an acidic 5.0 when we tested with pH paper and an alkaline 8.0 with a system that mixes soil with an indicator solution. So what to do? And do user errors or Continue reading →

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Posted in Science, Soil, Teaching

Our never-ending growing season

Posted on January 20, 2014 | Comments Off on Our never-ending growing season
Spinach very much prefers growing in cool weather.

Spinach very much prefers growing in cool weather.

Mother Nature and the school calendar present a couple of challenges to school gardeners in this part of the world. Conventional wisdom, for example, says do not put tomatoes in the soil around here until late May because a late frost, which would kill the tender plants, still is possible until then. But Continue reading →

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Posted in Four-season growing, Greenhouses, School garden

A cold winter day’s update

Posted on January 7, 2014 | Comments Off on A cold winter day’s update
Greenhouse

Our greenhouse withstood the recent high winds.

I know the winter isn’t over. But I am going to go out on a limb and say that we have made considerable strides in our greenhouse engineering. The plastic sheathing on our largest structure did not make it through the winter last year, but is looking quite good at the moment. It was standing up fine this morning to the kind of wind that really tests its mettle.

Continue reading →

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Posted in Greenhouses, School garden

The kids eat first

Posted on December 22, 2013 | Comments Off on The kids eat first

We are often asked what we do with food that we grow. The basic answer is kids come first.

As much as anything else, we simply turn to the students who are in the garden – during our Garden Club, for example – and ask, “Want to take something home?” Continue reading →

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Posted in School garden, Teaching