Harvest of the Month BEETS it again!
We had a blast distributing 225 lbs of delicious roasted beets this morning across Charlottesville City Schools. Beets have been on the hopeful list for a long time but we have continually steered away because of the heavy preparation that beets require. We are so grateful that we were able to recruit more than enough volunteers over Tuesday and Wednesday of this week to get the beets ready for serving yesterday morning. Growing beets is a staple in our CSG gardens. They are quick growers and can be harvested twice during the school year; once in the fall and once in the spring. They also...
Read MoreEmbracing Winter Weather at Clark
written by Zyanya Otal, Clark Garden Coordinator The winter weather has meant big things for our little hillside garden at Clark Elementary School! The after school Garden Club, a part of CLASS programming, has been busy exploring all the different organisms that make our garden successful, from the wriggling worms to the compost we create in the garden. As the days grow shorter and cooler, students have been focused on the importance of preparing the garden for the winter months and have taken the lead on incorporating compost into the soil, planting cover crops, and topping off each bed...
Read MoreProtecting the Worms at Burnley Moran
written by Andy Blunk, Burnley-Moran Garden Coordinator Throughout this past season, the garden has undergone its dramatic transformation from multicolored flowers, diverse vegetables, monarch butterflies, other flying insects and small songbirds, to the fall and winter colors of light brown, medium brown, and dark brown. Throughout these changes, Kindergarten and 2nd grade students have been visiting the garden to observe the changes of the seasons, practice descriptive words and comparisons, learn about and plant cold-tolerant crops, learn about soil erosion, cover the vegetable beds with...
Read MoreDecember Harvest of the Month-Brussels Sprouts
What an exciting and inspiring day last Thursday during the final 2018 Harvest of the Month. Going into Thursday, we tried to be practical in our thoughts that Brussels Sprouts were going to be a difficult sell. If you google “kids with Brussels Sprouts” your search explodes with many pictures of kids with turned up noses and grumpy pouts with plates full of steamed Brussels sprouts. There is a general societal understanding: kids don’t like Brussels Sprouts. As adults we know this to be true. We were so thrilled to find relief in the Harvest of the Month tastings; kids are...
Read MoreMeet Tianna Washington
Do you know the impact of growing a garden? Today it’s easy to feel lost, because the connection between us and nature is being left behind. When we were children, we wanted to be outside, but as adults we forget the importance of tranquility. There is strength in simplicity, as technology evolves our society has forgotten simplicity and our instincts. Although we are more evolved, we are still animals and we have been taken out of our habitat, stress and anxiety is sure to come with that. We are so busy these days we may not even notice that the feelings of being high strung are coming...
Read MoreMeet Zyanya and Andy
INTERVIEW WITH ANDY BLUNK 1) Tell us about an early experience with gardens and nature. My mom is a wetland biologist, and is somewhat evangelical in her approach to her passions, at least with her children. I grew up looking under rocks to find all the different microinvertebrates present and hearing my mom comment on the indicated stream health. It became second nature to ask, “what is underneath there?” and “what does that indicate about the larger system present?”. This wonder and recognition of the small things...
Read More