Garden Update

There's a lot growing in the garden!

Wheat

Beets

Carrots

Cilantro

Collard greens

Basil

Bell peppers

Eggplant

Calendula

Garlic--check out the curly scapes!  You can chop them up and eat them raw like green onions.

Chinese cabbage

Red onions

Ginger.  Curtiss planted this weeks ago and it's finally sprouting!

Sweet potato vines

Our squash "patch" flourishing

Different varieties of squash have different flowers...

...see?

Some patty pan squash is already growing fruit.

Planting Corn, Beans, Sunflowers

Today, Jamari, Rakeem, Robert, Marvin, and Makhi planted a crop of beans, corn, and sunflowers.  We're excited to see them grow!

Transplanting Peppers, Tomatoes, and Eggplant

The CJA summer programs began yesterday.  It's great to have students back in the building and in the garden.  Summer is in full swing!

Today we transplanted peppers, tomatoes, and eggplant that we started inside from seeds way back in March.  We could have done this a few weeks earlier, but they should still produce a good crop.  It just goes to show that in gardening, as in life, very little goes exactly according to plan, and most of it turns out just fine anyway.

Ms. Lucy watches as Kameron and Curtiss transplant tomatoes.

(Check out the potato plants in the foreground!)

DuShawn and Isaiah work on peppers and eggplant.

Magis Day, Harvest Day

Educators in the Ignatian tradition often use the Latin word magis (literally translated: "more") to describe the idea of a continual search for ways to draw closer to God.  CJA celebrates Magis Day at the end of the school year to recognize all the little extras our students, parents, teachers, staff, and community members do to help our young men on their path.

The garden at CJA is an example of the magis; students volunteer their free time to work in the garden to grow healthy, great tasting food.  They give more than what is required of them, and hopefully learn something in the process.  It's fitting then, that our first spring harvest and farm stand took place on Magis Day.  We harvested radishes, arugula, kale, spinach, and collard greens.

Jamari shows off the radishes.

Terrence harvests arugula.

Milaun makes a sale at the farm stand.

Moving wood chips

A healthy garden starts with healthy soil, and composting goes a long way toward building healthy soil.  The four main ingredients in a compost pile are air (from the atmosphere), water (which falls as rain), nitrogen (in the form of food waste and chicken manure), and carbon (in the form of wood chips).  Today we moved part of our wood chip pile closer to our compost bins, so it's easier to add carbon to our compost pile.

Cecil shovels wood chips into the wheel barrow.

Terrence dumps the wood chips near the compost bins.

 An added benefit of moving the wood chip pile is that the chickens get to eat the worms, insects, and other organisms that make their homes in the pile.  They also add their manure directly to the wood chips, so that when they are added to the compost piles, it already has chicken manure incorporated.

Planting squash

Last year we grew sweet potatoes in pots near the library windows.  We had a good crop, but now we have to grow something different there, since the soil components that sweet potatoes need are depleted.  To replenish the soil, we sifted compost and added it to the pots.

This year, we'll plant squash in the pots.  We selected three varieties: zucchini, delicata, and patty pan.  Javion made small mounds and put a few seeds in each mound.  Mr. Dwyer put a label in each pot, and kept a record in the garden journal.

Garden update

On a rainy Friday morning, here are some highlights of the activity in CJA's garden:

Chinese cabbage's mature leaves are spreading

Garlic standing tall 

Spinach looking very spinach-y 

Arugula is looking great 

Wheat is growing strong