The Orca K-8 School Garden Blog!

COMPOSTING TOTALS for the 2009-2010 school year! The data is in and it’s staggering- we diverted a lot of lunchroom waste from the landfill- over two tons!!!! Thanks a lot to all the lunchroom helpers who contributed and helped out. Thanks also to VISTA Beth Graves for really helping run this program and keep the data collected. Here it is:

Orca’s on-site wormbins: 551.76 pounds

Sent to Cedar Grove: 3916.24 pounds

Year Total: 4468 pounds

Total Average Food Waste Collected per Month: 496.56 pounds

Average Worm bin compost per month:34.35333333 pounds

Average Cedar Grove per month: 462.21 pounds

Here’s our video again on how we did it:

Thank you everybody for supporting and believing in the Orca Garden. All the volunteers, teachers, and students helped us achieve a lot this year.

We raised baby salmon and released them into the wild, composted almost 5,000 pounds of food, planted an amazing assortment of fruits and veggies for harvest this Fall, and we donated thousands of plants to 18 different non-profit groups and schools who are doing food justice and education work. Thank you!!!!!

This September we are going to have a lot more food to cook and eat with students- so don’t forget to come by every WEDNESDAY and visit our open garden w/ Beth and I. Peace!

We got to harvesting here on this last week of school. 3 different lettuce, 2 kales, rainbow chard, and a few mint leaves. Top it off with balsamic vinegar and bread from the Columbia City Bakery and we had ourselves a delicious snack. Thanks Melanie’s class for an amazing year. Extra special thanks to the bunny Bunnicula for coming out to visit also.

May was Bike To School Month and Orca really got into the spirit. Students were encouraged to walk or bike safely, in aneffort to encourage non-motorized transportation. It’s safer, cleaner, and healthier for you!

We had an amazing bike safety aseembly and bike “rodeo” from our buddies at Cascade Bicycle Club. We even had a stunt rider come in and perform tricks. It looks like Mr. McCullough’s class was the winner in our friendly classroom competition to see who biked/walked the most miles.

If there is one thing we know at Orca- it’s tomatoes y’all. This is how you transform a neglected garden bed into a robust and productive tomato garden. Can you say salsa in September?

hey- pick a salad- then deliver it to some kiddoes that still appreciate the green leafy yumminess of a fresh Orca salad. I was even able to harvest a couple baby carrots to chop up in there. Eating lunch with pre-kindergarteners is a special treat and would be the highlight of any sane person’s day.

What are we learning in the garden? What are valuable lessons to be taken away from garden experiences? How about understanding the full cycle of a plant?

These kindergarten students planted chard seeds months ago, transplanted them, watched them grow, tasted them, tore them out and chopped them up for the compost bin, then planted new chards to replace them. Sustainability, organic gardening, these are lessons these students are learning at an amazingly young age. The skill of growing food- it grows students as well.

I picked up a flat of tomato starts in Berkeley, Ca. from the legendary school garden education MECCA- Edible Schoolyard- a few weeks ago and drove them all the way home. We finally got them in the ground. How symbolic, to transplant these tomatoes from the garden education mecca to our own garden. Thank you Edible Schoolyard for the goodies!