The Learning Garden Expansion Continues!

Spring has been absolutely splendid the first two weeks of May very warm and sunny. Everything has grown well, including the weeds! They sprang up all around the potted native trees we have left over from the plant sales.

 

I moved the trees and removed the weeds. 

 

I raked the area flat and laid down some recycled plastic. I used landscape fabric staples to keep the plastic in place. This will provide a weed barrier for the rest of the growing season. 

 

We need more planting beds to accommodate all the vegetable starts we are raising in the greenhouse. The easiest way to go was to try out a simple raised bed kit made out of Cedar boards. The boards are cut to dovetail together. I started by stapling down some weed  barrier cloth that still allows the water to flow through the bottom of the bed, important in these beds in the winter.

 

The kit slipped together nice and easy I did use a hammer a little bit. 

 

The second tier of slats went on and I filled it with soil.

There is plenty of work to be done in the Learning Garden please join me Wednesdays from 11:00 to Noon.

 

Garlic,Morels and Bonsai!

Greetings from the Learning Garden!
Now that the weather has warmed up all kinds of things are happening in The Learning Garden. For the second year in a row Morel mushrooms Morchella esculenta  are popping up in our garlic bed. There is one large and several small ones.

 

 

Beginning Bonsai!

 

We had our first Beginning Bonsai class! Jim Dunlop past president of the Olympia Bonsai Club did a great job of teaching us some basics about getting started with the living art which is Bonsai. We plan to have another workshop in the fall. Here is a pictorial of the process we learned.

 

Jim explains the art of Bonsai growing and creating miniature trees 

 

 

We used wire to attach screens over the drainage holes in the bottom of our pots.

The wire that goes from side to side is to hold the root ball of the tree solidly in place.

 



 

Jim shows us how to gently remove some of the soil from the tree roots.

 

Jim is a past president of the Olympia Bonsai Club.

This is a very active club with over one hundred members.



Kenzie uses her chop sticks to poke the soil and settle all the various elements into it.

 



Jim shows Emilie how to secure her tree this protects the roots from breaking.

 

We used soft wire to shape our trees and make them our own.

 

Six beautiful Bonsai

We want to do this again  look for another chance in the fall.

 

Plant Sale a huge Sucess

Greetings from the Learning Garden!

 

Thanks to the hard work of our student volunteers and the overwhelming support of the St Martin's community our plant sale was a huge success!



Getting the plants we grew in the greenhouse acclimated to the sun!

 

 Potatoes and peas grown in boxes! Biogradable  planters, easy to harvest

 

Tomato plants

Happy People buying plants!

Come to the Learning Garden and see the Mason Bees working the early blossoms!

It is wonderful to see the Mason Bees using the cells provided by the holes drilled into these sections of limbs. These Mason Bee homes were put here by student volunteers when the Learning Garden was created. Mason Bees are very good pollinators essential to having abundant crops. 

Our vegetable starts are growing  very well in the greenhouse. We will have a nice selection of Heirloom and mixed greens for sale this Friday at our fundraiser for the Learning Garden. The student volunteers transplanted Tomato seedlings and bundled bare root Strawberry plants. 

 

 

We worked on potting up the perennials and ground covers we have received as donations. Thank you!! We can still use pots and plants.

 

We planted  seed potatoes in banana boxes on top of a layer of chips and covered  them with soil. We plan to add more chips and soil as the potatoes grow over the spring and summer. 

Layla and Saad planted more potatoes in a bed that grew garlic last season, and planted onions all around the edge.

 

Potatoes grow very well  in the Pacific Northwest  they have an affinity for our naturally acidic soils.

 

Holly planted Snap Peas. Peas and potatoes are crops that prefer the cool temperatures of springtime. Thank You to all the student volunteers for making the Learning Garden great!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Happy Spring! We welcome the Vernal Equinox

On March 20th 2013 our hours of daylight and our hours of darkness were  as closely equal in length as they ever get throughout the year and now everyday until the summer solstice will be light out a little longer until the longest day in June. Long ago this held more importance because people really needed to make use of the extra light to get what they needed to, done. But in those days people even made use of the bright light of a Full Moon to cut hay or even to frame buildings. Artificial light was in its infancy then and was used sparingly. We are using light to start plants to have plant starts for sale and for the Learning Garden.

 

Beautiful Seedling Tomatoes

See the seed leaves? (smooth)

See the second set of leaves? (toothed)

Below is an example of the benefits of transplanting seedlings into larger size containers

 

The plants in the front and the plants in the back are the same age.

The plants in the back were transplanted into bigger peat pots about two weeks ago. The plants in the back are much bigger the transplanting was the only difference in their care.

The deer have been visiting our Learning Garden beds we see their cloven hoofed foot prints.

Our strategy has been to keep our raised beds free of the types of plants that they like to eat during the winter months. I was told by the conservation district that deer will create a browsing circuit or route and if you can stay off of that  by eliminating tasty things when  the pickings are slim, you will have less problems.  

So far so good!

Please feel free to drop off used plant containers

and plants and heirloom seeds (seeds go in the shed) at the

Learning Garden.

We are having weekly work parties in the LG every Wednesday from Noon to 2:00. Please join us!

 

 

 

 

 

Plants and Work Parties

The Learning Garden is planning a plant sale for Friday April 5^th and needs donations of plastic pots of all sizes, large and small.  We also would appreciate any donations of plants flowering perennials, day lily, strawberry plants, raspberry canes, bulbs etc. Please drop plants by the Learning Garden located to the North of the dinning hall. Put them next to the shed. 

For the rest of the semester you will find us working from 12 to 2 every Wednesday. Please feel free to join us. 

With questions, contact our garden manager Lynn at her SMU email lynn.villella@...

Native Tree Nursery Grows

We now have an inventory of 35 plus potted native trees. Student volunteers working on their service learning commitments potted up another 20 plus trees today.  Four evergreen coniferous species Grand Fir Abies grandis, Douglas Fir Pseudotsuga menzeisii, Western Red Cedar Thuja plicata, Western Hemlock Tsuga heterophylla, and one deciduous species Vine Maple  Acer circinatum. This is a fine collection of trees that will grow well in this climate. These tree species have shaped the history of the Pacific Northwest. They have provided habitat, medicine and a livelihood to many who have lived here. It is good to know them and to grow them.

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See those green sprouts on the left that is Garlic! 

 

What a happy bunch of people and trees!

Thank You! 

 We hope to sell these trees and to use them to do Bonsaii anyone interested in establishing a Bonsai collection for SMU or learning, creating and having your own Bonsaii should contact me at lynn.villella@stmartin.edu . Keep posted to learn the date of our next plant sale we are hoping to have it the 1st Friday in April. Anyone with plants or bulbs to donate are encouraged to drop them off at the Learning Garden.

Native Tree Nursery at SMU

At our Plant Sale on March 1st we had 4 species of native trees that were available bare root. To keep them healthy we have begun to pot them up into 2 gallon buckets. The buckets are half the price of nursery pots the same size. To make sure the buckets drain as well as pots we drilled holes in the bottom of the buckets.

A well planted Vine Maple Acer circinatum

 

 

The students mixed up soil for the trees and filled the buckets.

Some of the trees required the roots to be trimmed. The planting went well. We will be planting the remaining trees tomorrow March 7th. If you would like to plant some nice trees stop by at 10:00 A.M. The species we will be working with are Vine Maple, Grand Fir, Western Red Cedar, Douglas Firs.  

This amazing crew also removed the rest of the remaining Ivy roots

that we were trying to eradicate and then transplanted seedlings in the greenhouse. I somehow managed to not get a single photo of that work we were so busy 

Holding our flowering Tat soi from the greenhouse

Thank You to all the volunteers!

Plant Sale Raises Funds for Spring Projects

People really turned out for our first plant sale of the year. We had a selection of fruiting plants, Strawberry and Raspberry plants were very popular.

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We are raising vegetable starts in the greenhouse. They will be available in about 3 weeks.We hope to continue to have our plant sale once a month throughout the Spring semester. If you have bulbs or perennials or Raspberry canes or Strawberry plants you would like to donate to our cause they would be greatly appreciated. Just drop them off at anytime by the picnic table at the Learning Garden located near the dining hall. Thanks to all the people who came out and supported the Learning Garden!