Monday, June 2, 2014

Organic School gardens now in Prescott Russell!!!

The students at Rockland Public School have been hard at work to plan and build there very first school based garden. The Grade 3 students have participated in a planning workshop and have put together a map of the kinds of yummy and healthy vegetables that they will be planting this week. The grade 6 students helped to build the garden beds and the Grade 1-2 students also participated in some planning workshops. Stay tuned!!!!
 
 
The building of the garden beds

 


 

Excitement is in the air!
These kids are all smiles!

Friday, May 2, 2014

Putting down roots in SD&G: Spring 2014 School Garden Update

Our garden workshop season is in full swing in Stormont, Dundas and Glengarry! We started planning garden layouts at the beginning of March with students in Crysler at École élémentaire catholique Notre-Dame-du-Rosaire.

Plan for the grade 4/5/6 garden in Crysler. Students used companion planting principles to design a garden that will resist pressure from pests, attract beneficial insects, and share soil space and nutrients well. After learning that plants need space students were careful to indicate seed spacing on the plan so that they could remember that some of the tiny seeds we'd be planting will become large plants!

Since last fall, our partnerships with schools have expanded and we are thrilled to welcome two new schools to the GUO family: the Akwesasne Alternative School and North Dundas District High School!

Saturday, April 19, 2014

Spring is here! A new garden for Kanata Research Park Family Centre!

It seems like spring has been such a long time coming....we could barely contain our excitement when the school garden building season finally arrived! The newest addition to the Growing Up Organic family is the Kanata Research Park Family Centre, where it's tiny attendees now have a organic garden addition to their beautiful site thanks to their hard work (and a little help from dad!).



On Thursday, parent volunteers and staff at Kanata Research Park Family Centre set to work building three new raised beds for children in their pre-school program to enjoy. Little hands were eager to help!


When the soil arrived it was a very momentous occasion and captured everyone's attention! We didn't waste any time loading the new beds with mini-wheelbarrow loads of rich black soil, with lots of help from adults with big wheelbarrows too!  In a week or two it will be time for planting! Potatoes, sunflowers, beans, peas.....we can hardly wait!


Thank you to the parents, staff and children at KRPFC for a wonderful day building the first new garden of the season!