November 22, 2022
Teach Real World Skills…. that is one thing we try to incorporate into our garden club. We have students sort and organize the garden items. It’s a great thing to do on those fall days when you are just getting your garden beds started. After students use gloves, we teach them to fold them up like socks. Many students have never folded socks so we teach them how. All the moms are super thankful for this…. LOL!
Other things we do in the garden is NOTICE all the good things going on. This is not taught enough in our society so we work to teach students to slow down, be still and notice! We see butterflies, bees, dead plants that need tending to, plants that need harvesting, etc.
Harvesting
Harvesting is everyone’s favorite so we usually leave that to the last action item. To harvest lettuce and kale, we teach students to cut the stem of the leaf at the base of the plant. We use baggies to collect the leaves so each student can take some home.
Another thing we do is notice what needs fixing. We like to add rectangle pavers to our cinder blocks to allow students to sit on the sides as needed. Each fall, we look at which of these needs replacing. Throughout the year, many pavers crack or break and need to be replaced.
Students surpisingly love to weed the garden beds. This is our large Native Texas Garden Bed and it needs a lot of tending to. In the fall, we pull weeds, put down cardboard or weed fabric and add mulch to keep it looking nice and maintained.
Another great FALL activity is planting new seedlings of brussel sprouts, cauliflower, cabbage, kale and lettuce. In September, we planted these veggies and each student created a tag. We laminated these with a small laminator to keep them looking nice through the season.
