the farm is almost ready for soil!

Almost every day you go to the farm recently, it has changed since the last time you were there.


Before, it was just newly built lasagna beds along the fences, but now we have vegetables growing in those same lasagna beds.





Look at our swiss chard, broccoli, cilantro, and peppers!!

It used to be open space, and now we have the raised beds!!

We have raised beds for a couple of reasons. One, we aren't sure of the quality of soil. If there are harmful things in the soil then we don't really want to eat anything that was grown there, and that kind of defeats the purpose of the farm. Another reason is this way was cheaper. It is hard to imagine how much some wood, liner, and dirt may cost, but it's a lot. However, the alternative, ripping up the grass and planting directly into the ground, was way more expensive.

So we worked together and we worked hard. We were sawing, hammering, drilling, and stapling our raised beds together. And it only took us a couple of days to get it done!

We also had to cover some of the wood with linseed oil to protect it from too much sun or too much rain.

Now we are ready for some dirt!!!

Building Raised Beds!

Ecostation NY and Bushwick Green Team have received provisional approval to start on our campus farm--so we are getting busy on just that!

On Thursday, Greenthumb delivered our lumber, delivered by Rasheed Hyslop and Andrew Barnett (of Grow to Learn)

Sean, Travis, and Christian were all there to help turn this lumber into raised beds for our first crop!

With guidance from the crew, a small crew of students from AUP and AEL had 5 beds assembled in less than 2 hours. There's lots more to do, but look at what we did!

After the boxes were assembled, we did some very needed irrigation! Last week was lovely, but it left our earliest crops very thirsty!

day 5 - replanting in preparation for a fundraiser!

Wednesday's garden club had one purpose:

repot plants into larger potters so that AUP could sell them for a Mother's Day fundraiser.

However, before we could get started some of the students found the clothing recycle that is in the corner of Mr. Schwartz's room. 

 

So, of course, we had to try on and model some of the awesome clothes we found in there.

 

Now we are ready to work!

First we had to make our soil.

Then we had to set up.

We put newspaper down, because we knew it would be messy. And we made three replanting stations -- one each for mint, lavender, and oregano.

We had to take the plants out of these planters -- some were too big and some were too small -- and put them into planters that are easily sold..

 

 

 

 

 Here we are replanting!

(We even had a parent come and visit!)

Here are some of our final products!!

parting shot: