Rebuilding our Vegetable Beds 2013

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About 14 years ago, we had a vegetable garden and gazebo built by a community garden group and a Boy Scout working on an Eagle scout project.  Throughout the years, our beds deteriorated and Bermuda grass took over. The bricks used around the gazebo also started crumbling and breaking down. We removed the bricks and bulldozed the garden area and made plans to rebuild. Of course, this takes quite a bit of funds, so we applied for two grants: Junior League of Dallas for $1,881.00 and a Real School Garden grant. We were fortunate to receive them both, and we are on our way to major improvements. The JLD grant helped us kick off our rebuilding efforts. Next year the Real School Garden grant will help us grow our garden area even more. They will also provide our staff with professional development and support for the next 3 years.

Here is our garden area on February 8, 2012. We pulled up bricks around the gazebo and the bricks are being reused as borders around several garden areas of our campus.

 

 

 

 

 

Instead of building the garden where it used to be, we decided to move it over to a much larger area that also receives more sunlight. We decided to leave the old garden area for an outdoor classroom and a picnic area.  On Saturday, April 6th, students, parents and teachers began the job of building 11 vegetable beds. We used the Junior League grant to buy all the materials for the 11 beds and 5 herb garden beds.

 

 

 

 

Before we filled the beds with soil and planted our vegetables, Mr. Bodden and his science students were already using the beds to figure out capacity, volume and the perimeter.

Students had fun playing in the dirt and filling up the beds.

The beds are planted, and we are monitoring them closely for the first signs of produce.

5 trash cans for our mint gardens contain spearmint, peppermint, mint candy, pineapple mint and grapefruit mint.

We love our garden. Students enjoy being in the garden so much that they ask if they can come help during their recess period. We have already tasted the fruits of our labor.

 

Tomatoes and peppers and strawberries!  Oh, my!

 

Looking forward to more fun and food!