Fall landscaping

The agriculture club usually focuses on growing food at CJA, but since the old chicken coop has been moved to a new location, there's a spot on campus that needs new ornamental landscaping.  The crew dug holes for transplants and used our compost to enrich the soil.

Malachi and Ms. Lucy dig holes for our new plants.

Mr. Dwyer could not resist adding something edible to the landscaping mix.  We planted two blueberry bushes, which also have very attractive foliage in the fall.

Moving the old chicken coop

Since the chickens got a new home almost a year ago, we've been meaning to move the old chicken coop and turn it into a tool shed.  We finally got the job done!  It took eight people to pick up the whole structure and slowly walk it to its new location.  Many thanks to Mr. Tengel, Amari, Jonathan, Elijah, Prince, Mr. Lynch, and Mr. Gosselar for pitching in!

Now we'll be able to have tools closer at hand while we're working in the garden!

Another Friday harvest day and market

On Fridays, the Agriculture Club harvests produce during recess and sells it at our farm stand during dismissal.  Another bountiful harvest and a successful market!

In this video, Brian harvests Good Mother Stallard beans.  We wait until the pods have dried out to harvest the beans, which can be stored for months.

Here's a clip of Walter harvesting a cabbage.  You can tell it's ready for harvest when the head is nice and firm, even if it's still pretty small.

Brian demonstrates how to harvest shiitake mushrooms in this video clip.

In this video, Walter harvests a patty pan squash.  Everyone says they look like UFOs.

 Ginger is ready for harvest.

Walter cuts off the stalks, then we dig up the roots.

Brian and Walter show off the ginger plant.  We'll break off a piece and replant it so we can harvest again next year.

The weather is beautiful and we have a beautiful harvest to share with the CJA community.

Students smell the delightful aroma of fresh ginger root.

Pesto Update

A few weeks ago we made pesto sauce.  Malachi designed a label, and we've started to offer them for sale.

Planting sunchokes

Yesterday, we planted sunchokes, which are also called jerusalem artichokes.

Here's a picture of someone else's sunchoke flowers.  We took the picture from www.makeitmissoula.com

The edible part of the sunchoke is the tuber that grows underground, like a potato.  We ordered a bag from a seed catalog.

In order to grow sunchokes, we divide the tubers into parts.  Each piece needs at least one eye--the part of the tuber that will sprout a new stem--and enough of the tuber to provide energy for the growing plant.

Malachi divides a sunchoke.

Walter and Brian plant sunchokes by adding compost to the soil and covering the hole with mulch.

Brian and Walter show sunchokes to the boys and girls in Vocel, an early childhood center that is housed in CJA's building.

The sunchokes will be dormant over the winter.  In the spring they'll grow into plants with yellow flowers, up to six feet tall.  In the late summer and into the fall, we can dig up the roots to harvest the tubers, which can be eaten raw or roasetd.

Transplanting blackberry bushes

Today we planted blackberry bushes.

Malachi gathers wood chips and Brian gathers compost.  Both will be essential for creating a healthy environment for our seedlings.

Walter and Ms. Lucy dig holes for the bushes.

 After filling the holes with compost, we gently place the seedling in the hole.  Next we pack more compost around the plant, mixing it with the existing soil.

The last step is to put a layer of wood chips on the surface around the blackberry bush.

We'll water the seedlings to make sure their roots take hold this fall.  In the spring, they'll continue to grow, and within a few years we'll be able to harvest delicious blackberries here at CJA!

Sweet potato harvest

The leaves on our sweet potato vines have started to turn brown, which means it's time to dig up the delicious root crops.

Walter unearths some sweet potatoes.

Brian works to pull one loose from the soil.  It was hard work!  Notice the vines and leaves we cleared away in the lower right corner of the photo.

Another bountiful harvest from CJA's garden!

It's a jungle out there!

When looking for jalapenos to harvest for hot sauce, we came across this spider eating a fly.  What an amazing place a garden is!

Tomato Harvest Video

Here's a short clip of our tomato harvest...

Making pesto

Since our crop of basil is increasingly at risk of suffering from frost damage, we took the opportunity to make pesto sauce!

Ms. Lucy, Malachi, and Brian select the best leaves.  We feed the rest to the chickens.

Malachi washes the basil leaves.

The basil is ready to go.

Walter, Malachi, and Brian peel garlic and compost the skins.

The garlic is peeled and ready.

Walter adds the basil to the food processor.

Brian grinds pepper.  We also added salt and olive oil.

Once the ingredients have been mashed up into a sauce, we added them to cooked pasta.  Typically pine nuts and Parmesan cheese are added to pesto.  We didn't add the nuts because of allergy concerns.  We didn't add the cheese because the sauce stores better without it.  It was still tasty!

Frost damage to crops

When the temperature of water drops below 32 degrees Fahrenheit, it begins to freeze.  This is important for gardeners because all plants have lots of water in them.  Gardeners call nights when the temperature drops below 32 degrees a "frost."  There is evidence that we had a frost earlier this week.

The tender leaves of basil turn brown when there is a frost.

Bean leaves shrivel and curl because the freezing temperatures killed some of their most vulnerable cells.

The first frost isn't all bad news.  The browning of the sweet potato leaves means it's about time to harvest!