Spring!

The garden's certainly starting to shape up now that it's Spring...

Our strawberries are starting to flower.

The kale & chard bed's doing nicely, too.

 We're getting visits from out local pollinators...

...and here is the newly hung sign!

One more thing: on Thursday, May 31st, we'll be holding our first annual Vancouver School Garden Picnic! It's at 3:45 right here in the garden, and all are welcome!  We'll have photos from the event up soon after.

Herb Patch + City Farmer

On Thursday, we planted some more seeds in our herb patch: cilantro and parsley.  We'll transplant the basil plants soon.

Our chives are pretty healthy as well...

As is all of our kale!

Some of us also took a tour of City Farmer, a demo garden on the corner of Maple and 6th.  I've included a link to the entire photo album below (we took quite a few photos).  We also got some great ideas for planting, composting, watering, and much more!  If you ever find yourself near the demo garden, be sure to drop by for a visit, it's highly recommended!

City Farmer album: https://plus.google.com/u/0/photos/117766690004523371125/albums/5734450801914943809?authkey=CKfJ-_SXtN6G9wE

New Season, New Soil

Last Thursday, the club worked to prep the garden for the Spring. Working with some brand new soil we purchased, we finally filled and evened out the remaining empty beds. We'll be planting some new plants soon!

We also re-staked the apple trees and transplanted our raspberry bushes beside a fence. We had a group of observers all the while:

Seeds!

We planted some new tomato and parsley seeds last week, and they've already germinated! They're currently sitting in a windowed room in the school, where they'll be getting plenty of sunlight during the day.

We're going to be transplanting these guys in mid-March, so stay tuned until then...

Thank you to the Kits Seed Library of Village Vancouver for supplying us with our parsley seeds and some basil seeds! Next year, we'll be sure to give some of our garden's seeds back to the Library. (You can find more information about the Seed Library and Village Vancouver here: http://www.villagevancouver.ca/group/kits-village-seed-savers-kits-seed-library)

Winter

It snowed in the garden for the first time in a long time. Here are a couple photos of the plants and snow:

Harvesting + Recipes

On Thursday, the club came out to the garden to harvest the kale we planted last Spring. It was great to harvest some of our produce (there are recipes for kale listed at the bottom of this post).

...and here is our new composter from Metro Vancouver! We used the money we received from the PAC to purchase it, and it's already taken up all of the excess yard trimmings and food scraps we couldn't fit in our first one. Thank you, PAC!

Lentil Soup with Kale

Ingredients

*Note: these are flexible - you can mix and match as you like

1 cup dried lentils [brown or green], rinsed

1 Tbsp quinoa (if available)

1 medium yellow onion, diced

2 carrots, diced

1 rib celery, diced

1 garlic clove, minced

2-1/2 cups low-sodium chicken broth

3 cups water

5 cups torn kale leaves—discard thick center stems

1 tomato, diced

salt and freshly ground pepper to taste

Directions

1. Rinse lentils and quinoa under cool running water. Place in a large pot.
2. Add chicken broth and water.
3. Add onion, carrots, celery and garlic to pot.
4. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer uncovered for about 20 minutes, stirring occasionally. Cook until lentils are tender.
5. Stir in kale and tomato. The kale will quickly wilt and reduce in volume, so don’t panic. Cook until kale is tender.
6. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

Sautéed Kale With Garlic

Ingredients

• 1 1/2 pounds young kale, stems and leaves coarsely chopped
• 3 tablespoons olive oil
• 2 cloves garlic finely sliced
• 1/2 cup vegetable stock or water
• Salt and pepper
• 2 tablespoons red wine vinegar

Directions

1. Heat olive oil in a large saucepan over medium-high heat.
2. Add the garlic and cook until soft, but not colored.
3. Raise heat to high, add the stock and kale and toss to combine. Cover and cook for 5 minutes.
4. Remove cover and continue to cook, stirring until all the liquid has evaporated.
5. Season with salt and pepper to taste and add vinegar.

Kale Chips

Ingredients

1 bunch of kale, washed and stems removed

2 tbsp apple cider vinegar or lime juice

1-2 tablespoon olive oil

sea salt or seasoning blend to taste

Directions

1. Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit.
2. Chop or tear kale into pieces.
3. Mix oil, salt and vinegar (or lime juice) in a bowl, mix well with kale and massage into kale pieces.
4. Spread onto baking sheet.
5. Bake for 10 minutes or until crispy. Take kale out immediately if it changes colour to brown.

PAC Recap

Our presentation to the PAC (in case you couldn't guess from the title of this post) went extremely well! Thanks to all the members (and Ms. Chung) who came to help out! No word yet on whether or not our application was approved, but the parents were really enthusiastic about the garden, so hopefully we'll be starting on some of our bigger projects very soon!

Here's a basket of veggies and fruits from the garden that we brought to the meeting

Going over our presentation

Old concept drawings of the garden (I'll post about these in more detail)

A few carrots. Or a metaphor for togetherness. Nice one, Danielle.

Last-minute prep

Mission accomplished! Unfortunately, No photos of the presentation, but it went really well.

Kale, Chard, and Canada Geese

We had another very productive meeting today at the garden. A dedicated group of gardeners showed up to help us plant some kale (brought in by Ms. Chung) and some Swiss chard (brought in by Danielle) that will grow over the winter. We also got a chance to use our compost, which has been over two years in the making, and it is as healthy as ever. We're keeping the newer kale plants covered for now so they have a chance to grow undisturbed while they adjust to their new home.

Hopefully the newly transplanted kale will grow as abundantly as our existing plants, seen below. Here we are harvesting some kale that was planted last season. Some tips for eating include:

-Boil and serve with oil and vinegar

-Stir-fry and serve with other dishes

-Eat raw

Kale also tends to get sweeter after the first frost.

A bit of a post script here, but at the end of our meeting, we saw huge flocks of migrating Canada geese:

That's it for now. Stay tuned for more!

Starting Off the Year

The start of another school year, and we are off to a great start! After everyone settled into the routine at school, we held our first few meetings of the year. We had over 40 newcomers this year, so it looks like we'll have plenty of helping hands!

We had a very productive meeting today, with around 20 people showing up to help out with aerating, staking, and weeding. We'll be preparing the beds for the winter later on this month, filling them with soil and planting seedlings. We're hoping to have some new winter crops within the next few weeks, so stay tuned!