The third week of our ‘Kids in the Garden’ was HOT! With the hot weather and ‘Camp Invention’ going on we had a smaller group of just 7 kids. It was a FABULOUS group though and we did lots of great things in the gardens and managed to stay pretty cool while doing it.
Our afternoon started out by taking the kids to check out the south gardens. We ran out of time last week and we wanted to make sure everything got a good looking over. 
The kids helped identify the plants growing and also identified what shouldn’t be growing (the weeds) and pulled some out for us. They stopped out and measured the sunflowers: 11-inches
After the kids visited the gardens we headed back to the sheds, grabbed drinks from the hose and ran through the sprinkler to cool off. Next on the lesson plan – SOIL! Diane showed the kids different types of soil – clay (from our orchard), sand (from Frank and Diane’s land), and compost. 
Once they looked at the soil it was time for a trip to our compost pile! 
Next – we mulched the duck race garden. The kids shredded up newspaper and spread it around the plants. While we were looking at this garden we also did a quick check on our rain gauge gnome – zero. 
Then they added woodchips to hold the paper down. 
Once we had the garden mulched the kids took the bottles they had painted the week before and added them to the edge of the duck race garden. 
We’ll have the kids that missed class put their bottles in to complete the ‘look’ at our next session – which is on July 12th. There’s no class next Thursday with the fourth of July but don’t worry – we’ll keep things alive until we meet again! 
After another water break – we took the kids out to some of our fruit gardens to find a little snack. Our first stop was the tractor tire strawberry gardens – we just have a few plants for Cedi and Capri to munch on but we did find enough ripe ones for the kids to all try one. They are ever bearing strawberries, not very pretty but definitely delicious!
Next stop – a snack of blueberries in ‘Blueberry Bumble’. The blueberries are just starting to ripen. Be sure to be on our email list so you don’t miss out on blueberries this summer. I’ll be sending out an email soon with details on how you can buy some! I mentioned to some of the mom’s that it was quite an adventure starting our blueberry garden and if you want to read about that check out this blog post.
On the way back, the group stopped under our new playground set and went digging for some more worms to add to the worm farm. 
It was a successful dig!
With a few minutes left in our session we just let the kids play on the swings and in the water. Olivia was definitely the water bug of the day!
See you all on July 12th! Have a wonderful 4th of July!
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