Our second planting

It's been a productive spring, the kids planted both from seed and transplants from our local farmer and within just one week we began to see our efforts pay off. Our transplants took root and our seeds sprouted little shoots. 

kale and green chard transplants

radish sprouts from seed

snap pea sprouts from seed

don't blink carrot sprouts from seed

spinach sprouts

Just three short weeks later this beautiful radish was plucked from the soil, picture perfect by a six year old first grader who after the photo promptly brushed it off and took a bite ! Crazy that kids will try something they've created so easily!

our burgeoning kale beds

hand watering radishes in hand!

Meet our local farmer

This March marks our first spring planting at our edible garden but before being able to go ahead a trip to our local farmer in cohorts was required. Kevin Flaim of the Panther farm in Vineland took us on a tour of his working commercial farm to show children just where there vegetables come from and how they get to the supermarket.

Kevin Flaim of Panther farms

this is a special planting machine that takes each of the carefully greenhouse seeded transplants and one by one mechanically plants them in the ground

another view of the planting machine

the newly planted crops

a dry fertilizer spreader

more crops to plant

because it is threatening to snow again the new tender transplants must be covered with a "paper towel-like" tarp.

Kevin shows us how the spinach crop from last year is coming back, but due to the weather extremes it is pale yellow to white in some places. He hopes it will come back as it warms up.

We are shown the root structure to a Kale plant that has been planted last year and is coming back again this year

Finally, tender leek shoots are growing in the warmth of this long narrow greenhouse, one of many his farm has.

These are leeks one year in the making!

Kevin shares some leeks for us to take home and cook!

What's on our menu for Newbie's early Spring garden:

This time around we will be planting, red and yellow beets, red and green chard, kale and red cabbage from transplants Kevin has donated and from seed we  will be planting carrots, snap peas, mustard greens, spinach and radishes!!!

Hurricane Sandy and our garden relief fund

This fall green team members planted over 150 romaine, red leaf and green leaf lettuces. We donated our beautiful yield to our Newbie families and still had more than we knew what to do with.

Sadly Hurricane Sandy came and tore through New Jersey. We knew we as a community and school had to do something. So we set up a little farm stand at school and then on the soccer fields one Saturday and sold our lettuces to donate ALL the proceeds to the New Jersey Red Cross Southern Shore Chapter.

our farm stand for Sandy

A happy customer with a head of Romaine!

Another happy customer with Green leaf! 

And our garden is done until Spring!

Mark Newbie Garden First Planting

Our Mark Newbie Green Team

 Last year we began green team on a single quote found, it seemed to define for us what green team stood for, our mantra. 

Green Team Mantra

“In the end we will Conserve only what we Love,

We will Love only what we Understand, and

We will Understand only what we are Taught.”

~Baba Dioum Senegal

It is with these words and a weekly shopping trip to whole foods that this idea was born...a brochure picked up about whole foods giving grants to elementary schools to create edible gardens. What did we have to lose? What better way to give each child a sense of responsibility to the land that feeds them. We have begun a way of project based learning that in our suburban environment can give our children a safe space for the exploration of play and activity in the outdoors. This structure for the green team is hopefully just the beginning of a more hands-on outdoor classroom amplifying math, science and language arts that are currently only taught inside. And if nothing else we have begun a process of learning about where our food comes from and how to tend and care for what nurtures us.

Sal our builder gets some help from Superintendent Scott Oswald, Newbie Parents and Borough local teens

progress

placement of kindergarten bench

almost done, now just for the soil and plants!

Our first season of planting are lettuces donated by our Collingswood market farmer Kevin from Panther Farms in Vineland, NJ.

When these lettuces are ready we will be offering them to our Mark Newbie students to take to their families and enjoy, if there are too many to finish we will be donating them to a local food bank. 

This will be our first growing season we hope to learn a lot to help us toward our big spring planting.

planting our romaine transplants

ready set start planting!

After our first planting we received some press!

Collingswood Patch

The Retrospect