River HomeLink Garden Tour: Here’s what you missed, and more to come!

On May 19th, eight teachers were in attendance at the Open School Garden at River HomeLink in Battle Ground. Kris Potter, an educator and garden program coordinator at River HomeLink, gave a tour of the school's outdoor learning space.  Features in the garden site includes a native plant landscape, raised vegetable garden beds, worm bin, composting sites and toad houses, just to name a few ! After the tour the group talked about square foot gardening with "seed papers" and discussed how to create lesson plans using the garden. The following is an overview of the valuable info that Kris shared. The next school garden event is the "Getting the Garden Ready for Back to School" on July 12th. Brandy Livingston will host at the Helen Baller Elementary School garden. Stay tuned or contact Erika.d.johnson@wsu.edu or 360-397-6060 x 5738 for more details. Check out the flyer below!

Square Foot Gardening

This is a useful method to grow a large quantity of vegetables in a small space while reducing time spent on maintenance. Seeds are planted equidistant apart in all directions to maximize space what allowing sufficient space for the mature plants to thrive. Close spacing serves as a sort of "living mulch" helping to hinder evaporation of moisture in the soil, shade out weeds and moderate soil temperatures. The 3 season growing season we enjoy here in Clark County allows for early spring planting of "cool weather crops" such as leafy greens, brassicas (broccoli, cabbage, and cauliflower), root crops and peas. When these crops are finished, the empty squares can be amended with some compost and planted with "warm weather crops", mainly fruiting crops such as tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers and various squash. As these crops are harvested, the "cool weather" crops can be planted again for a fall harvest. Using this method, many of the squares can produce 3 harvests in a single year. 

The amending and replanting provide a type of automatic crop rotation throughout the season. By placing the seeds directly where they need to end up, thinning is minimized and reduces wasted seeds and time. To simplify seed placement, seeds may be glued to paper napkins to create easy-to-plant "seed papers" that are 1 square foot in area. Students merely lay the seed paper in the appropriate square, cover it with soil, sprinkle it with water and they're finished. When working with children, the square foot method provides a useful visual boundary within the garden bed. Assigning students a square to work in reduces confusion and aids in class management when out in the garden.

Planning Lessons is a Snap!

Whether as a teacher or school garden coordinator, planning lessons to be used in the garden are best done if started with a clear learning objective. Plant part functions and plant growth are easily taught in the garden, and the Square Foot method aligns well with math concepts such as area study, arrays, multiplication, measurement, symmetry, etc. Historical gardens including a pioneer garden, victory garden or formal herb garden can fit within social studies standards. The sequencing activity on the steps to planting a seed in a pot teaches the concept of algorithms for coding. A lesson covering reading seed packets fit within the reading standards and the vegetable garden can serve as a model (for an ecosystem for example) in some of the science standards. In-depth knowledge of the Next Generation Science Standards or learning standards for other subjects is not necessary, but a working understanding of them is good (The National Science Teachers Association has a great network of planning resources here ). Understand that garden lessons don't need to meet all the standards within a subject. The standards are fairly broad and garden lessons can be adapted to meet them.