A community of gardeners

So it's August. It's hot as heck. And there's not much going on in my home garden. What can I say, the veg plants are the only things in town that seem to dislike the shaded plot out back this summer.

Aside from the ever-robust compost bin, it's pretty sad back there. But that doesn't mean the plants aren't lush in other parts of my life. Check out the growlab residents, all started from seed in my living room last month:

Those little lettuces, beets, and flowers were just transplanted to their new home in my newest FoodPrints garden during this weekend's School Beautification Day. Oooh, the kids are going to be so thrilled to see the thriving plants when they return to school tomorrow. I bet they'll be especially excited to see the 3 Sisters Garden plot, with heirloom popcorn grown taller than the parents who came to help me with garden cleanup on Saturday:

Many thanks to my former intern Jessica for plantsitting while I was visiting friends in Vermont and Connecticut for a couple of weeks, to the volunteers who have helped to water the garden daily through these hot summer months, and to the parents and community volunteers who came to help me dig up the grass between the raised beds, mulch paths, weed, water, and transplant this weekend!

Minding our peas and queues

So I've been a teacher in some official capacity on and off since the early 2000s, initially working with high schoolers, then middle schoolers, and finally a handful of years ago I began to focus on elementary school aged kiddos. The past year has been my first foray into working with preK students and let me tell you that while I was initially a little nervous about my ability to create and teach meaningful lessons to kiddos who still can't tie their shoelaces, I've found that 3 and 4-year-olds are a LOT of fun. I find that there is a lot more singing and dancing and hand holding (literally) when I work with my youngest garden stewards and cooks at Tyler Elementary. They are definitely the best students in the school at making a straight line to go outside to the garden, but that's not all....

We've had lessons where we imagined we were seeds sprouting in the soil, soaking up the sun through our leafy hands and water through our rooted feet. We've pretended we were tender lettuce and hardy kale growing out in the garden beds -- which one do you think enjoyed our long, cold winter? We've shaken up our own homemade ranch dressing and devoured it drizzled over salads the size of our respective heads. We've made seed balls with native flower seeds. We've dug up a bed of potatoes....

I must say, more than any other group I've worked with, they are the best at patiently looking for camouflaged snap peas, helping to schlep plant bits to the compost bin, and being willing to taste just about anything in the garden. I can't wait to see how they (and our garden) continue to thrive in coming years!

How does our garden grow?

Well, it's looking like another one of those bipolar DC summers: 93 and sunny one day, 62 and rainy the next. (I am not such a huge fan of the torrential downpours like the one Ollie and I biked home in yesterday afternoon, but I suppose it's good training for Ireland and Scotland, where I'll be kicking around in about a month.)

The plants are LOVING it. The snap peas and broccoli are exploding in the garden beds, potatoes are blooming, the herbs are going bonkers, and the spinach is experiencing some kind of miracle extended season now that I've won the battle with the leaf miners (and maybe the coverage from the volunteer sunflowers is helping the shade-loving greens), and even the kale is thriving.

How does our garden grow? Like a weed. (Not many of those, thankfully, since I've also managed to train an avid bunch of recess-time weeders. Nice.)

Every time I am in the school garden, there are about a dozen kids who stop to pick and eat mint, and I've been showing every kid who walks by how to harvest and eat lettuce and peas. Even with kids "accidentally" pulling up radishes and eating underripe strawberries, there is almost too much produce for us to utilize in FoodPrints classes. I'm going to have to start sending home kids with bags of vegetables again....

Luck be a ladybug

Yesterday I got a phone call from a fellow FoodPrints teacher that went something like this:

"One of the teachers accidentally ordered too many ladybugs for our garden. Want some?"

"Sure. It'd be great to knock down the aphid population over here."

"Great. There's about 5,000 of them. One of the parents will drop off the box in the main office. Put them in the fridge for a week if you aren't ready to release them yet."

"Oh. Okay." (Who orders five thousand too many? And is it normal to keep live beetles in the fridge on purpose? I wondered. But I am not one to look a giftbug in the mouth.)

I've ordered worms in the mail before -- three times, actually (and, no, not because I killed the first two batches, thank you very much) -- so I consider myself pretty experienced when it comes to the creepy crawly package opening. I could not have prepared myself for the tickly joy that was the release of thousands of ladybugs in the garden that afternoon. And since I had opted not to refrigerate them back into hibernation, they were ready to go as soon as I opened the two little baggies they were packed into. I was fortunate to have many dedicated garden assistants to help gently spread them around the 15 raised garden beds at Tyler.

Go get 'em, ladybugs!!

They are the coolest, cutest aphid devouring machines EVER.

Spring, is it really you?

Readers, I'll admit that the delayed onset of spring has made me a little grumpy lately. (Okay, since we're coming to the end of lent, aka Confession Season, I confess that cold weather generally makes me a less pleasant person, so there's been a lot of grump in my general vicinity over the past 6 months.) My god, it feels like I have been huddled up just waiting for the sun to come out and the soil to warm up for ages! Did I start the sweet potato slips on my windowsill too early this year? Have I set up the milkweed in the GrowLab at school for failure starting seeds in early March? Did my first ever asparagus bed bite it during the subarctic winter? These are the things that keep me up at night. (I know, I know: first world problems.)

Thanks to a motherlode of straw mulch, one lonely, 2-inch tall celery made it through the endless winter, along with a handful of strawberry plants and about a dozen leafy greens (kale, chard, collards, and what I just discovered is a tiny broccoli plant and not a cabbage after all). And the frost-burned garlic plants that didn't get pulled up by curious preschoolers are holding on. But it's looking kind of sad out there in the school garden.

We've had a few 60 degree days in recent weeks, at which point students and I would sprint out to the garden to plant. I suspect that the first few batches of seeds germinated and then froze to death during this past Saturday's freak snow flurry and below freezing daytime temperatures. (When I'm feeling more hopeful, I convince myself that there's a chance things never got warm enough for them to get going in the first place and they'll poke little green leaves above the surface soon. But did I mention how cold weather makes me less optimistic?)

Meanwhile, I planted yet another batch of seeds with kiddos this week: snap peas and onions, potatoes and larkspur all went into the ground. Arugula, spinach, lettuce, and radishes coming soon.... Go on Mother Nature, you keep teasing us with warm days, I'll keep planting more seeds. You may have wind and rain in your arsenal, but I've got the boundless optimism of kids on my side. We'll see who wins.

Are you a worm expert?

It's funny, I've composted at home for a handful of years now, and tried my hand at worm composting at least twice, with mixed success. But to the 1st grade FoodPrints class I was assisting with at SWS this morning, I seemed to be one of the authorities in the room.

"Are you a worm expert?" young Isabelle asked me as she crumbled coconut coir into our homemade, two-level bin. I tore up some more paper bag scraps as I considered this new title.

"Well, I know that worms breathe through their skin," exclaimed her table mate, Evan, "so that makes me kind of an expert!" He had a point.

I wonder what makes someone an expert at anything, really. I mean, I am pretty darn good at changing flat tires. And improvising ways to lash an inordinate amount of stuff to my bicycle. I can prepare a meal out of seemingly incompatible ingredients -- take my chicken, chickpea, peanut, and coconut milk stew I tossed together last week for some personal chef clients: delish!

I suppose by the time I got through working with the fourth group this morning, I was a worm expert. I could talk about slimy skin and a lack of teeth and not letting the bedding get too wet with the best red wiggler authorities out there. Especially if my colleagues are 6 years old.

I can't wait to start a bin with 1st graders at Tyler Elementary in a couple of weeks. Viva la vermiculture!

The eye of the beholder

I tell you, when I got an email with this photo the other day, I was beside myself. A garden bed, just filled with healthy soil and compost, mulched around the perimeter, and all ready to plant! 3 feet by 8 feet by 10 inches of pure, unadulterated garden potential. Ohhhh.

I almost swooned.

The message came from a member of the Outdoor Classroom team, part of the group that helped to construct the 8 brand spanking new raised garden beds at Tyler Elementary a couple of weekends ago. Here we are all smiley and spent from our afternoon of sod wrestling and drillplay:

And now: one ready-to-plant garden bed. Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy.

What to plant in this very first bed? Snap peas! No, wait, spinach! Hold on: lettuce! Carrots! Radishes! Flowers! ... Maybe a row of each? Can't wait for school to reopen next week. Meanwhile, I'm spending spring break mapping out garden plans, digging up strawberry runners for transplanting, starting sweet potatoes on my kitchen windowsill, and daydreaming about warmer weather and snap peas.

Yeah, I'll probably want at least one whole bed of snap peas. I mean, the kids will.

Repeat after me

Well, folks, I finally had to have that uncomfortable conversation with my kids on Monday.

It was the final section of my 3rd grade FoodPrints class on Eating (at least) Five Fruits and Vegetables Every Day. As we reviewed students' One Day Food Journals to survey how many fruits and veggies students in the class had eaten in the previous 24 hours, students called out examples:

A handful of blueberries on my cereal! Yes.

Carrot sticks and ranch dip with my lunch! Well done.

An apple and some peanut butter for a snack! Same here, kid.

French fries! Excuse me? No. Try again. Technically potatoes are vegetables, but for our purposes, we're going to count them as starches.

But I had lots of ketchup on the fries! Excuse me??

Imagine the sound of tires screeching on asphalt. That is the sound that was in my head as I took a deep breath. All this time I thought this was an urban kitchen myth. People didn't ACTUALLY think ketchup counted as a vegetable... but apparently they did. I suppose I can't really blame the kids. They had some logic.

Ketchup is made out of tomatoes, and tomatoes are vegetables, another kiddo piped up.

Okay, class, let's be clear here. Ketchup is NOT a vegetable. It is mostly salt and corn syrup and Red Dye #5 and teeny, tiny little bit of tomato. Repeat after me: KETCHUP IS NOT A VEGETABLE.

Ketchup is not a vegetable.

Again.

Ketchup is not a vegetable!

One more time.

Ketchup is NOT a vegetable!

Good. Now let's move on to preparing our three seasonal salads...using actual vegetables.

Green pre-teens

It's not just me who is obsessed with raw kale salad. It's not even just the entire third grade at Watkins Elementary who can't get enough. Now folks all over the city will be making it. At least those who attended the healthy cooking session at the Good Food Stage at 2pm last Saturday. Some of them were fortunate enough to walk away with beautiful bouquets of fresh kale, courtesy of FreshFarm Markets (who sponsored the demo), ready to make it at home.

I like to think it was me who got the audience interested in eating dark leafy greens, but in truth credit is due to the Watkins superstars who stole the show during our salad making demonstration at the Green Festival. Many an audience member came up afterwards to pick up a copy of the simple yet irresistible recipe, to ask questions, and -- mostly -- to marvel at the poise and skills of my assistant chefs.

We all know I hate public speaking, but I keep ending up in front of groups. Luckily, these amazing 9-year-olds from my third grade FoodPrints classes last year upped the cuteness factor enough to cover for my mumbling into the wireless microphone and near stabbing of myself in the hand trying to saw open the jug of olive oil. Many thanks to my lovely assistants, Destiny, Damiyah, and Londyn, for their help this weekend -- I'd be proud to work with you any time!

Cabbage coming out of my ears

I have spent the better part of the past two weeks preparing and eating cabbage -- a vegetable that I never particularly cared for in the past, one which usually ended up in a jar of kim chi for lack of inspiration on my part. But I had an assignment: find a tasty soup that included cabbage...that a 5th grader could help to prepare and then would actually eat. Ah, a challenge, to be sure!

Testing out various cabbage-based soups was part of my recipe research for a FoodPrints' 5th grade lesson, which, like all FoodPrints lessons, would include a hands-on communal cooking component. The final cabbage soup recipe became part of a pretty great lesson centered around WWII Victory Gardens -- a lesson made especially awesome by the inclusion of incredible historic resources like the 1940s ration books and stamps that my co-instructor Barbara found in her parents' attic. During our discussion and activities about rationing, the kids really seemed to get the sense of urgency, the critical importance of resource conservation, and the self-sufficiency that families on the American home front exhibited during World War II. Not only that, but they turned around and started volunteering all kinds of great ideas about why and how kids today should conserve resources and encourage their peers and neighbors to garden today. It warmed my heart. And the soup warmed my body. (Thank goodness for that with these recent freezing temperatures!)

We made two big batches of cabbage soup during last week's classes and I've got two more classes -- and thus two more giant pots of cabbage soup to make -- next week. Good thing I've grown to love cabbage and beans. And after a taste of the final recipe, it appears that a whole lot of 11-year-olds have, too. They were clamoring for seconds like you wouldn't believe!

Tuscan Bean and Cabbage Soup

This recipe is adapted from TheSoup Bible. (Thanks, mom and dad, for this timely Christmas present!) There are many versions of this soup which uses ingredients many American families would have grown in their World War II victory gardens. This one uses white beans, leeks, and cabbage. It is especially great alongside whole wheat toast with fresh herb butter.

Ingredients

• 3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
• 1 medium yellow onion, diced
• 2 medium leeks, white and light green parts only, well-rinsed and sliced
• 1 large potato, scrubbed and diced
• 2 garlic cloves, peeled and minced
• 2 cups of dry white beans, pre-cooked and drained
  (or one 14-ounce can of cannellini beans, drained)
• 4 cups chicken or vegetable broth
• 2 generous cups green cabbage, cored and thinly sliced
• ½ cup fresh parsley leaves, washed and chopped
• 2 tablespoons chopped fresh oregano (or 1 tablespoon dried oregano)
• 1 jar of canned tomatoes, chopped
• coarse salt and ground pepper
• ¼ cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese

Directions

In a large Dutch oven or heavy pot, heat oil over medium-high. Add onion, leeks, potato, and garlic.  Cook, stirring occasionally, until softened, about 5 minutes. Add stock. Stir in cabbage, parsley, oregano, beans, and tomatoes. Bring soup to a boil, then reduce to a rapid simmer. Cover and cook until vegetables are tender, about 20 minutes. Remove from heat. Season with salt and pepper.

Spoon out about 1/3 of the soup into a food processor or blender and process until smooth. Return puree to the soup pot and stir together. Ladle soup into bowls and sprinkle with a generous spoonful of Parmesan.

(It's okay that I'm putting the recipe up: the free, open-source FoodPrints lessons will be posted online soon!)