Planting Our Strawberries

Thursday October 22nd, Ginger and George from Clemson Extension brought us strawberries to plant. George explained to our Youth Advisory Council/ 4 H group (consisting of 3rd, 4th, and 5th graders) how to plant up to the crown of the plant. Then they assisted this group plant the strawberries into our bed. The children enjoyed learning about the crown of the strawberry plant and how it acted like the lungs of the plant. Since it needs air and light, they were instructed to plant to the crown only. The bed was planted in a grafting pattern. Math and science lessons were intermingled with the fun. Pictures included.

Preparing the Strawberry Bed

Clemson Extension will be delivering strawberry plants to our school. We had the district office construct us another bed. This one is 8x8 and we are again using the plastic surround to have a raised bed. Mrs. Wetmore's third grade class mixed the top soil and the mushroom compost together to fill our strawberry bed. I have enclosed pictures of these students working so diligently to prepare this bed.

Fall

Now that some wonderful parents have cleaned and tilled our garden, we will place a layer of annual rye grass over it to keep the weeds out until we are ready to plant our spring crops.

With some of our grant money, we have purchased our own tiller, green house, and benches for the children to write in their journals. When the district maintenance personnel put together our greenhouse, we will dig up our banana tree and place it in the greenhouse for the winter. We will also store some of our herbs in the greenhouse for the winter as well as use it to start our seedlings for the spring garden.

Start of a New Year

I have learned a very important lesson! Do not leave at the end of the school year without removing the leftovers from your garden, tilling it, and then covering with some sort of mulch. Otherwise you come back to school with 5 feet tall weeds!!!!

My husband and I tried to clean it up with our tiller but the weeds kept clogging it. We used the weed eater and that helped. Needless to say the ground is hard as a rock. This was a very unpleasant lesson!!

End of First Year Pictures