Summer Gardening: Week 2

For our second week of summer gardening, we focused on soil and compost. Students made their own "compost pile" in a cup, learning about decomposition and what ingredients are needed to make compost for the garden. We also learned about the different components of soil and how different plants grow best in different types of soil. With the warm weather, students helped to water the school garden beds everyday. It is quite a task to water 22 garden beds! While we were watering, students discovered they can create small rainbows if they lightly spray water toward the bright sun.
During our snack time with OSU Nutrition Extension, students prepared Personalized Pasta Salad, using broccoli and snap peas fresh from the garden. On the last day of Week 2, students took home a big bag of lettuce to share with their families.

Summer Gardening: Week 1

This past week the Vestal Community Garden held its first week of summer gardening camp. Students learned and reviewed gardening basics ranging from how to plant seeds to how to harvest and properly wash garden produce. Each student planned and planted his or her own garden plot and we look forward to a late fall harvest from the newly planted beds. Over the course of the week, students tasted varieties of lettuce, snap peas, radishes, onions, strawberries, and broccoli. It is so exciting to see kids eager to eat fresh fruits and vegetables. With the help of the OSU Nutrition Extension Program, we were also able to make "Popeye Power Smoothies" using spinach and kale from the garden.


Not only are students learning and growing in the garden, they are also helping with maintenance over the summer- weeding, watering and harvesting from the school garden beds. We look forward to the next week of camp which will focus on soil and compost.

Super Salad Eaters

Vestal students have been enjoying garden fresh salads to celebrate the end of the school year. It was a unique experience for students and teachers to eat fresh lettuce that they grew and prepared themselves. Many of our students are super salad eaters, asking for second and third helpings of fresh healthy veggies.



Our salads included all six parts of the plant: seeds, roots, stems, leaves, flowers, and fruit. Take a look at the recipe below:

Six Plant Part Salad (courtesy of OSU Nutrition Extension)
Serves 4

Salad:
1 Head of Romaine Lettuce
1 Bunch of Broccoli
1 Apple
1 Carrot
2 Ribs of Celery
1/4 cup Sunflower Seeds

Dressing:
1/4 cup vegetable oil
3 Tablespoons apple cider vinegar
2 Tablespoons honey
1 Tablespoon dijon mustard

Direcitons: Wash and chop all vegetables into bite size pieces. Mix dressing in a small jar or container. Toss all vegetables and dressing in a large bowl. Sprinkle with sunflower seeds. Enjoy!

Garden Get Together This Saturday!

Our final event of the school year is our
Garden Get Together this Saturday June 11th from 10 am- 12 pm.
Enjoy time in the garden and meet Vestal families and community gardeners.
There will be an art project for kids and you may bring a snack to share.
We hope to see you there!

Thank you to the fantastic community gardeners who helped out at the work party last Saturday. We spread the remaining wood chips, cleared out the unofficial compost pile, and weeded the native plant hedgerow. We could not have accomplished this without your hard work and dedication to the garden. Thanks again!

Gardening Helps Our Students to Grow

Upstream Public Health and Farm to School just released a new study showing that garden-based education boosts academic achievement and test scores. You can take a look at the report here.

The Vestal Community Gardens provides students with hands-on outdoor learning opportunities. Over the past year we have seen how working outside of the traditional classroom and applying classroom concepts to real life projects has helped to improved Vestal students' academic and personal success. We are so excited that there is now official research to back-up the positive changes we see in our students.

June Events

We invite you to enjoy what the garden has to offer Vestal School. We encourage everyone to be a part of the garden and attending one of our June events is a great way to start.

Garden Work Party- Saturday June 4^th 10 am- 12 pm

We will be getting the garden ready for the summer months.

No gardening experience needed. We will supply tools and snacks.

Garden Get Together-

SaturdayJune 11^th 10 am- 12 pm

Enjoy time in the garden and meet Vestal families and community

gardeners. There will be an art project for kids and you may bring a

snack to share.

Questions? Contact Garden Coordinator Laura Benjamin at laurabenjamin.vestal@gmail.com or 503-916-6437.

Hooray for the Sun!

Thank you to all the wonderful Vestal parents and students who helped out at our Big Spring Planting this past Saturday April 30th. We painted our two new picnic benches, transplanted strawberries, and planted over 20 new plant starts. It was a beautiful sunny day and it was so nice to be outside spending time in the garden.

We are planning a June work party as our last garden event of the school year. Keep a look out for details to come soon.