Thank you!

 First and foremost, we owe a huge Thank You to Mr. Joe Tappe and Mr. David Olson for building our tables.  Without you, our greenhouse would not be as successful as it is!

Thank you also to our generous donors who have given funds to purchase wood for the tables, soil, seeds, worms and more! 

Thank you for giving our students this learning opportunity!  

 Here we grow again!

We decided to grow some potatoes, carrots and lettuce for our green house. Our plants, like our radishes and paper whites have continued growing and have survived throughout the cold night last night. We decided to give our paper whites as gifts to our parents and sell what we have left for more plants and materials for the green house. The paper whites will be $5.00 a piece and will be wrapped in craft paper to make it look nice for the holidays.  Check back soon for a picture of a sample!

Our groups have continued researching grants for the plants, and the bugs and insects that we will be putting in our green house if we get the chance to. We also have researched what plants we may grow in the spring. Our plants have survived for so long and we still  have hope that they will fully grow. Please send us more soil and other materials to keep the green house alive! - By Chase and Stephen

Next Steps

During Thanksgiving break our plants have grown so much more. Our onion's, radishes and green onion's have sprouted a lot more. We've enjoyed are planting and now we are researching what plants to grow next, how to improve on our plants we already are growing, the cost of the them (If we sell them) and the bugs/insect's we could put in our environment. We hope our plants will soon be full grown.

We need more soil! Please send in soil with your student A.S.A.P. - By Chase

The First Sprouts

Our plants have grown so much in 3 days that they have filled up the soil with roots and have sprouted.  We have had a ton of fun planting these paper whites, onions and radishes.  We think that the plants will grow to be full size in less than a month hopefully.  Photography and introduction by Chase and Stephen 

On Tuesday, in addition to checking on the plants, watering them, and beginning our research, we had a visitor from the school district.  Mr. Kim Underwood visited to take pictures of the students gardening, and  may feature us on the district website www.wsfcs.k12.nc.us,  or on the school system's blog http://wsfcschools.blogspot.com/.

After checking on the plants we headed to the computer lab to conduct research on our topics of choice:
Grants
Drip Irrigation
Vermiculture
Herbs and other plants we can start

  

Seeds of Progress

We continue to see progress in the greenhouse.  We are VERY appreciative of the donations, time and energy that parents have contributed.   We now have a gorgeous table in our greenhouse and will have another soon.  We have also planted some cool season crops.  We have cabbage, onions and radishes planted. The students also have planted paper whites to sell or bring home in a few weeks. 

We have talked about seeding (with the necessary amount of room between), read labels, discussed planting / watering techniques, we have repotted a plant that was becoming too large for its pot and discussed the parts of the plant and seed. 

This week students also grouped themselves according to what interested them.  We are going to research how to grow herbs, how to create a drip irrigation system (because we will need to have the plants watered on weekends / breaks), some students signed up to maintain the blog, others are going to apply for a Wal-Mart grant and the last group is going to start our vermiculture bins this week. 

Here are some pictures from our Discovery Classes this past Tuesday and Thursday.  

Things we continue to need:  

• 2-3 outdoor trashcans (preferrably new, or just clean would work)
• soil 
• red wrigglers 
• drip irrigation supplies
•  

Roots of Learning

Your kids know how to clean!  :-)

Today, students worked diligently to improve the greenhouse's appearance.  They cleaned windows, emptied donated pots and cleaned it with a 10% bleach solution.  

We also used our creative juices to come up with a name for our blog and a list of things to accomplish in the coming year. 

What do we want to do with our greenhouse? 
Well . . .  we want to :

• Apply for a grant to help fund the greenhouse
• Start a faculty committee to have additional support
• Possibly work after school on additional projects with more students
• Sell seedlings in the spring to fund raise
• Donate food grown
• Connect with local restaurants to help students cook the food that we are growing
• Visit a local greenhouse to see it in progress
• Try our hand at vermiculture
• Have other students contribute ideas for what to grow
• Taste tests for other students of what we are growing
• Come up with a logo / symbol to help us advertise (maybe have other students submit their proposals)
• Invite younger students to grow plants in the greenhouse / have students in our group go and teach other kids about where does food come from. 

Some of our Discovery Group Cleaning up.  Thank you to the kids for taking pics!