Students in the Garden

Students braved the rainy weather this week and got their hands dirty in the garden.  Monday afternoon Lyons students planted runner beans, trimmed the grass, thinned the broccoli and carrots, filled holes, and put up nails in the shed to hang tools on.  Rob led the students through a lesson on the plants already edible in the garden, and the students tasted radishes, arugula, basil and scallions.

On Wednesday we made a chicken wire trellis for the beans, weeded, created a border around the daisy and zinnia sprouts, picked up trash, thinned the rest of the carrots and discussed our summer maintenance plan.  We picked radishes, lettuce, basil and arugula and divided them up among us.  We grew icicle radishes and red globe radishes, which are both mildly spicy.

Icicle and Globe radish

My share of this early harvest turned into a salad (with a balsamic vinaigrette coating the lettuce, arugula and slices of the radishes), which shared the table with pasta with red sauce with the basil leaves torn on top.  Since one of our goals is to encourage healthy eating habits in the student gardeners, we're figuring out how to incorporate food preparation into the project.

All in all, we're quite happy with how the garden is growing and that each week and number of eager students grows as well.