2007 harvest total spreadsheet

Final Harvest

Today's harvest by 4th graders working with Mrs. W. and Ms. R. included:

• 4 pounds of carrots
• 1 1/2 pounds of cabbage
• 1/2 pound of misc. (radish, beet, swiss chard)

Students inspected the frost damage and helped to take out any remaining plants that are ready for the compost pile. All that's left to do is pull out the broccoli that went to seed and take down the tomato ladders.

The flowers are still growing well. We've had a lot of rain lately and no more frost so they have really filled in. Students like to go into the garden during their recess and look at all of the colors.

Angleworms are GOOD for the garden

Well, it’s been a week since our hard frost, and we still have things to do in the garden. Today we invited any of the 4^th graders that wanted to work with our volunteers to come into the garden during their morning recess time. Mrs. W. had lots of company and helpers. Here is her report:

The kids were sure busy this morning. I was able to teach them:

1. Angle worms are good for the garden. It lets you know you have healthy soil so don't take them out of the garden.

2. Showed them the little cabbages developing on the cabbage plants, and how you get them.

3. Whenever taking plants out of the garden, make sure you shake the soil off the roots into the garden.

Just a few things to harvest today.

• One purple cabbage head that weighs 2 ¼ pounds
• 1 beet
• 4 radishes
• One carrot -- we’ll pull the rest of the carrots next week.

One of the sunflower roots was left out to dry off in the garden. The tomato vines are just waiting to be pulled out and destroyed because of the problems we had with spotting leaves and blossom end rot.

Our compost corner is growing. The flowers look wonderful thanks to being covered up before the frost, they are still going strong.

Jack Frost coming to visit our garden tonight

Frost warnings are posted for the entire region, so it’s time to make a final harvest. It’s a really windy day, fall is definitely in the air.

Several 4th graders set to work filling four red tubs and one cardboard box with the following:

• 16 radishes
• 3 giant Marconi peppers
• 14 Chinese bell peppers
• 38½ pounds of green pear tomatoes and “regular” tomatoes.
• 8 cucumbers

A grand total of 46¾ pounds were harvested from the garden beds today.

We’ve only been back in school for one week. Students were just starting to enjoy going to the garden during their recess to see what had changed.

Now most of that will be over for this season.

Also cut down were the sunflowers, but not before kids got one last chance to enjoy looking up at them and posing for photos.

Kids, can you believe how tall these sunflowers you planted, watered and carefully measured have grown? They’re lots taller than you are! We forgot to take a final measurement, but see how they extend over the top of the fence line?

It will be sad to see them come down. But our art teacher wants to use the sunflowers for a special project in her classroom. We look forward to enjoying them in a new way.

This garden project produced over 100 pounds of produce. We counted up to 300 separate vegetables that were harvested, but so many tomatoes made up this final harvest that we lost count.

Just how many pear tomatoes are there in 13 ½ pounds? What about all those green tomatoes? They weighed 25 pounds, but how many were there? Lots!