Stoic Straw Sentinels

With the smell of wood smoke in the air, the crunch of leaves under our feet and the vibrant orange color of pumpkins dotting our community landscapes, the students of the Green LIONS Garden Group ushered in the Fall season with our annual scarecrow building contest!

We started with a short lesson on re-purposing items and how that can reduce our waste. Then students chose their scarecrow outfits from a pile of donated clothing and re-purposed pillowcases. Students collaborated, flexed their creativity muscles and worked together to create their masterpieces.

As you may be able to decipher from the photos, the weather was certainly Fall-like and crisp. Despite the cool air and strong winds, which made working with straw very interesting, our students worked happily together and were real troopers.

We usually take final photos with each team standing with their Straw Sentinel, but we all dashed inside after cleaning up our garden area and then voted on our most creative creation.

The pirate won hands down.
Must be the peg leg. Brilliant!

Down Comes the Rain, Out Come the Worms

Rainy weather posed a challenge at our last Green LIONS Garden Group keeping our young gardeners inside. But when learning about gardening and sustainability, there are plenty of lessons that can be explored inside and still be effective.

Students were introduced to our program’s worm bin, or our tiniest group of garden helpers. They also reviewed the world of decomposers and where worms, as decomposers, fit into a food chain.

When stuck indoors, games can save the day. Students were asked, “Where does all of the energy of the earth begin?” Answer: the sun. The sun provides light energy for the producers to combine with carbon dioxide from the air to make their own food through photosynthesis. Producers are then eaten by primary and secondary consumers. Finally, when producers or consumers die, they are broken down and returned to the earth via decomposers.

Students divided up into four groups; a sun group, a producers group, a consumers group and a decomposers group. Suns scooped up a large handful of energy, aka popcorn, and then passed it on to the producers group as carefully as possible. Try to keep your energy! The producers then passed on the energy to the consumers and finally the consumers to the decomposers. As one would predict, the decomposers had the smallest handfuls of energy, with the rest of the popcorn spread across the floor representing consumers and their use of energy through respiration, digestion, etc. Students were then asked, “If producers receive the most energy from the sun, do we think there would be more grass in the world or hawks?"

We then explored the worm bin taking out a few red wigglers for a closer look. With the help of re-purposed clear plastic lids and flash lights, students were able to observe the worms’ 2-5 sets of hearts and their intestines. They then showed their findings in a worm sketch.

Students also received their Green LIONS Garden Group t-shirts! Looking good Sustainable Ambassadors!

Don’t Bug Me! Or Do?

The students of the Green LIONS Garden Group were busy, busy, busy at our last meeting. Now that our fall garden is planted and thriving lessons were learned on how to help the plants along. Think water, sun, healthy soil, and tender loving care.

Group members divided up into six teams for various garden maintenance tasks. Our Thirst Quenchers watered the garden both with watering cans filled from the rain barrel or through water buckets using re-purposed plastic container “rain makers”. The Tree Tenders watered and noted the health conditions of our six garden area fruit trees. The Beautification Committee cleaned up any trash found in the garden area and also cut fresh flowers and herbs for a school front desk bouquet. Garden Data Sleuths noted the temperature of the day, the rainfall inches for the week, the weather conditions, and the current moon phase. Sleuths also chose two different kale plants in two different beds to serve as sample plants. These sample plants will be measured weekly to chart their growth. It will be interesting to see if bed placement and sun exposure make any difference in the plant’s individual growth rate. The Weed Hunters & Gatherers did just what their name implies. And finally, the Bug Detectives looked for cabbage moth eggs and cabbage worms on our Cole crops.

Speaking of Bugs, we also got to know garden bugs up close and personal. Which bugs do we want in our garden? Which bugs would we not like to see? It is important to know the difference. If we want to grow our plants without the use of chemical pesticides we need to learn how to address a pest infestation. There are many factors to consider.

If there are pests present, like aphids, cabbage worms, or stink bugs there can be cause for alarm. But if we also see beneficial insects like ladybugs, praying mantises, or assassin bugs we should consider stepping back and letting nature take its course. Beneficial insects will often take care of keeping pests under control by including them in their diets. Sometimes keeping some unwanted insects around for the beneficial insects to eat is helpful.

If we target a pest without investigating what conditions made it enticing for them to appear then we are missing a valuable opportunity to encourage a healthy garden. Just as we are more likely to contract a cold or other illness when our bodies are stressed, it is typically indicative of a plant’s compromised health if many pests are present. A proactive gardener looks for clues in the plants and the soil to help boost the immunity of the plants and hopefully rectify any pest problems. If we choose dominating control in the garden when dealing with unwanted pests, like using pesticides (even natural and organic ones) we risk hurting beneficials too. Plant a varied garden and leave some wild spaces to attract beneficials to your garden.

Weeds can be accurate clues to determine what is going on in the often confusing and mysterious soil ecology of your garden. Certain weeds like to grow in certain soil environments. Some weeds grow when soil is compact and over-saturated. Growing a cover crop and adding some rich compost can help break up compacted soil. Some weeds indicate a need for more nitrogen or can even indicate that all is well and your soil is fertile and well-tilled. Weeds dig down deep to pull up rich minerals to the soil’s surface. Leaving weeds in for a bit can be helpful to add these minerals to your garden environment. Just be sure to pull weeds out before they go to seed and spread.

Students learned even more about a specific benefit some garden visitors provide—Pollination. We observed the flowers in our garden area to determine which ones would most likely attract bee pollinators and butterfly or moth pollinators. Bees like sweet scents, shallow landing pads, blue, white or yellow flowers, and a short, tubular opening to access the flower’s nectar. Butterflies and moths like a light scent, vibrant colors, and a large landing pad on a flower or clusters of blossoms that serve the same purpose. While we don’t have any long, tubular flowers in the LIONS Garden, we learned that hummingbird pollinators prefer them. Keeping many varieties of flowers and nectar sources in a garden attracts pollinators that will also find the flowers on your vegetable and fruit plants. We can’t grow our vegetables and fruits without them!

New Students, New Plants, New Garden!

The Green LIONS Garden Group officially kicked off its 2014-2015 school year on September 24. While we planned to plant our fall garden on that day, a Nor'easter had other plans. So like plants that can acclimate to changing weather, we moved on to Plan B.

At our first meeting we learned about the different parts of plants we eat; roots, stems, leaves, fruit, seeds, and flowers. We explored different familiar plants and determined what part it is that we commonly eat. Did you know that a broccoli floret is actually the plant’s flower? We also looked at how these different parts of the plants contribute to the plant’s health and well-being.

The roots keep a plant in place and also store some of its food for later use. The stem helps to move water and nutrients from the soil up into the plant out to its leaves. It also helps to move sugars from the leaves, created during photosynthesis, to other parts of the plant. The leaves aid in photosynthesis absorbing light energy from the sun and carbon dioxide from the air to create its own food, and give off oxygen as a waste product. The flowers help to create either the fruit that contains the seeds to make future plants, or the seeds themselves to help produce more of the same plant. The flowers are also perfectly designed to attract pollinators to them to help create the fruit.

Students learned how plants are a major part of most food chains. Because a plant makes its own food, it is called a producer. Insects, other bugs, and all animals are consumers because we can’t make our own food. Students divided up into groups and each played the role of either a plant (producer), insect (consumer) or animal (consumer). Students in each group then had to place themselves in order from the smallest to largest in their food chain.

Food chains lend themselves to food webs and symbiosis, a relationship in which both parties or multiple parties help provide what is needed to allow the other party or parties to thrive. While animals eat plants we also help to spread the plant’s seeds. While plants give off oxygen that we breath, we breath out the carbon dioxide that the plant needs to make sugar for its food. Animals also eat other animals and insects. Through a not so successful yarn web experiment (yarn malfunction) we were able to see that if there were no plants, there would be no insects, then there would be no hon-human animals, and finally no humans. But if there were no humans, animals would still thrive and if there were no animals it is reasonable to think that insects and plants could survive. We concluded that we need plants more than plants need us providing yet another strong argument for why we need to take care of our planet.

So on Wednesday, October 1, our second meeting, the sun was shining! Farmer John from New Earth Farm came out to help the students plant our fall garden. We planted lettuce, cabbage, green onions, mizuna, bok choy, tatsoi, arugula, kale, herbs and garlic. We have a handicap-accessible garden table in the garden area and our youngest program participants (the children of our parent representatives) planted a special selection of plants in it. It is the LIONS table in the LIONS garden. Thy planted Lettuce, Italian flat-leaf parsley, Oregano, Nasturtium seeds, and Sage spelling out the word LIONS. The LIONS in our LIONS Garden name represents Local, Indigenous, Organic, Nutritious, Sustainable.

Come visit the LIONS Garden and see our beautiful fall plants carefully planted by our newest gardeners!