School Garden Committee Fall 2018 Newsletter

News From

UCCE San Diego County Master Gardener Program School Garden Committee

Fall 2018

Featured School - Tierra Del Sol Middle School

When the garden coordinator at Tierra del Sol Middle School in Lakeside retired, there was a halt in the garden program. Then, last spring, teacher Mike Bishop and his special education students stepped up to revive and care for the garden.

The garden has a fenced area with three large raised beds, a picnic table, and several galvanized planters outside the fence. Adjacent to this is a full orchard with young trees becoming established. The students created and installed colorful signage in the orchard, making it a bright and happy place. They enjoy having their science classes in the garden.

Last year they started some worm bins, and had some success growing salsa vegetables. This year they plan to fine tune the irrigation system, amend the soil, and grow lots of vegetables.

Although their beloved coach is gone he is memorialized and remembered in the garden at Tierra Del Sol, where he worked for so many years. His love for the students, and his commitment to heath and fitness go on, and are being carried forward to a new generation of lucky students.

Cathy Sparks

What to Plant Now

Click here to access an excellent resource by LifeLab for inspiration and planing resources to kick of the school year.

" Of course, planting dates are determined by climate, and so vary from place to place. This is a general guide to they types of plants you can consider planting in your garden at various times throughout the school year to ensure a harvest while school is in session. Talk to your local garden center or farmers to find out about plants and varieties that specifically thrive in your region, and about planting windows that work in your region."

Cool Season Crops: Plant now for harvest before or after the Winter Break.

Full resource here

Sow Seeds Directly into Garden Beds	Plant Transplants into Garden Beds
Beets	Asian Greens
Carrots	Broccoli
Garlic	Cabbage
Onions	Calendula (edible flower)
Peas	Chard
Radish	Collards
Spinach	Kale
	Kohlrabi
	Lettuce
	Nasturtium (edible flower)
	Onions

Essentials in Education

Outdoor Education

"In a review of research, author Dorothy Blair from Penn State University found children active in school garden programs scored better on tests of science achievement. They also displayed more positive food consumption behavior." For the full article, click HERE

Garden Curriculum

Back to school and back to the school garden! Wondering how to transform a crispy, summer-neglected space into a space for teaching students? Here is an online lesson from Growing Minds that will teach how to plant your fall garden.

If you have LifeLab's The Growing Classroom book, use their "Inch by Inch, Row by Row" lesson to teach older students how to plan and map garden beds or their "What Good is Compost?" lesson to compare how similar plants grown in different conditions (amended and unamended soil) compare.

Earth Friendly Gardening

Tally up your gardenʼs earth friendliness


	Valorie Shatynski with her compost bin (Courtesy of Valorie Shatynski)

by: Dawn Standke

The Earth-Friendly Gardens program is designed to help San Diego County residents evaluate management choices when caring for outdoor spaces.
The program is built around eight simple principles: select appropriate plants, nurture the soil, manage pests responsibly, protect wildlife, grow food, conserve water, protect air quality and reduce waste. To certify your garden as Earth-Friendly, you need to check off a minimum number of items for each of the eight principles.

To learn more, visit the UC Master Gardeners website at www.mastergardenersd.org and click on the picture of the Earth-Friendly sign.
UC Master Gardener Valorie Shatynski became familiar with earth-friendly gardening practices as she grew up in southern Oregon on a family farm. They raised flowers, onions, sugar beets and turf to harvest their seeds for sale to major seed companies. One of Valorieʼs tasks was removing weeds and disposing of them outside the field to prevent reseeding. Removing weeds is extremely important in the seed business; companies reject products contaminated with weed seed.

Shatynski learned early that her family had to care for the soil and manage pests responsibly to take care of the land and stay in business. They used fertilizers and pesticides judiciously. Broad- spectrum insecticides kill beneficial insects as well as problem insects, which makes the problem of pest control even more difficult. They regularly brought in beneficial insects to control pests.
Shatynski became a UC Master Gardener in 2016.

For the original article and examples of how her home garden fulfills the eight principles of earth-friendly gardening click here.

The Lorax by Dr. Seuss - Beyond the Book
The history and science of The Lorax

THE LORAX Written by Dr. Seuss in 1970, this childrenʼs book tells a story with an important message. It is every bit as relevant today as it was then. The Lorax persists as an icon in the American environmental movement in part because it ends with a message of hope.

By: Judy Crall

The NY Times ran an article about the history and science of Dr. Seuss writing The Lorax, NYTimes_2018/07/23/ Written by three professors at Dartmouth College and NYU, in Nature, Ecology and Evolution.

For the full New York Times article click Here

EXCERPTS: [Inspired by Earth Day in 1970,] Geisel began to set down words, not pausing to agonize over rhyming and rhythm or even to sketch characters. He noted that he had read so many "dull things on conservation, full of statistics and preachy", that making such a subject amusing "was the hard part" and he suffered from writer's block. It wasn't until months later, in September 1970, when Geisel visited the exclusive Mount Kenya Safari Club, that a breakthrough happened: "I had nothing but a laundry list with me, and I grabbed it...I wrote 90% of [The Lorax] that afternoon".

[The truffula tree resembles the [whistling thorn acacia (Acacia drepanolobium), [and the lorax resembles the] male patas monkey; the subspecies in Kenya (Erythrocebus patas pyrrhonotus) distinguished by its black facial skin and white nose. [The acacia provides 80% of food for these monkeys.] ......

By 2010, The Lorax had been translated into 15 languages with more than 1.6 million copies sold; it is ranked by American educators as one of the top 20 books for children and it is described as a foundational ecopolitical text. It is also the subject of lively scholarship, with a particular focus on the indignant, reproachful rhetoric of the Lorax and its effectiveness for engaging in environmental discourse . [references provided in .pdf]

The Lorax persists as an icon in the American environmental movement in part because it ends with a message of hope . Restoration of the Truffula ecosystem seems possible if the younger generation heeds the mistakes of its forefathers. Can we extend this same hope to the commensal interactions that might have inspired The Lorax?

Compilation of excerpts by Anne Fege

Seasonal Recipe - Peach Cobbler

Fruit Cobbler

Nothing says summer like a piece of warm fruit cobbler with a scoop of vanilla ice cream. For two easy and delicious cobbler recipes, click Here

By: Cathy Sparks

Grants

These schools received grants for their gardens:

Scripps Ranch High School has a sunny new garden and was awarded the Master Gardener grant to purchase irrigation and plants. SRHS also had three new raised beds built by an Eagle Scout, Eric Bregman, in record time.
Murray Manor Elementary School was awarded a $500 grant for purchasing tables for the garden.
High Tech Elementary School of San Marcos received a Master Gardener grant.
Heritage Flex Academy of Escondido received a Master Gardener grant.
5 Clairemont elementary schools (Toler, Lafayette, Whitman, Hawthorne and Field) won a $25,000 Sage Garden Project grant to fund garden education for their schools.
Jamul Primary School received the Master Gardener grant.

To learn about upcoming grants available, click here. Be sure to set aside some time to apply for grants NOW as grants are plentiful and easier to apply for in the fall. The easiest grants close in the next few months.

Conference Scholarships Available!

We have received generous donations from the Village Garden Club of La Jolla, Fagan, Friedman and Fulfrost Attorneys at Law, and Delta Kappa Gamma International Society for Key Women Educators designed to provide more than 30 scholarships for Gardening with Class garden conference attendees.

The scholarships will be provided in the form of reimbursements of the $50 registration fee. You must complete and submit a brief application form as well as physically attend the school gardens conference on October 20th. You are eligible to apply even if you have already registered and paid for the conference. Applications will be reviewed and selected by School Garden Committee members. Submission of an application does not automatically mean you will be funded. Reimbursement will be provided by check. The deadline for submission of the application is September 24 th . To learn more, check our conference registration page in the General Information section for a link to more information about our conference registration reimbursement and the short application.

Click here to register before classes fill up!

Quick Links

Master Gardener Association of San Diego County supports the University of California Cooperative Extension Master Gardener Program of San Diego County.