Gardening in January in west Michigan? Yes!
This month we installed a regenerative, no-till school garden at Godfrey Early Childhood Center in Wyoming. We were greeted with sunshine as we engaged in the process of covering the ground with cardboard, paper, leaves, and mulch. Soon a blanket of snow will cover the layers causing them to break down and create a […]
Is it Dirt or is it Soil?
This month 850 students at 3 Wyoming schools learned that “soil” is the scientific name for the ground in their school garden. They discovered that soil has both living (organisms, decaying matter. air and water) and non-living (clay, sand, silt) parts and that it is the living parts that add important nutrients to our food. […]
A New School Garden Install
Super Garden XV! Our recipe for a new garden at Godwin Middle School Ingredients: A big dump truck full of wood mulch (10 yards) A truck load of composted mulch (7 yards) At least 20 yard-waste bags of fall leaves Many sheets of cardboard from collapsed boxes 20 – 7th and 8th grade students 7 […]
Harvest Time!
Harvest Time in our school gardens includes picking, weighing, washing, preparing, and tasting! Watch the excitement, in this video, as the students at West Godwin Elementary discover cucamelons growing from overhanging vines and show off the radishes, peppers, cucumbers, and other vegetables they have harvested. After harvesting, students took their vegetables to a scale where […]
Garden Paths for Happy Feet
Sometimes little feet are so happy to be exploring in the garden they forget where it is safe for them to go. “Oh no was that a plant?” We want the children to feel free to roam through and enjoy their school gardens and at the same time preserve and protect what they have […]
Herb Gardens for Seniors
Part of our mission at H.O.P.E Gardens (Helping Other People Eat) is to inspire our student gardeners to not only grow food for themselves but to also consider helping the people in their community have access to healthy garden produce. Our middle and junior high students embraced the challenge by planting beautiful herb gardens as […]
Bugs in Our Garden!
Summer garden students could hardly contain their excitement as they turned over rocks, looked under plants and dug in the soil in order to observe the abundance of bugs living in and around their school gardens. They compared the creatures they captured to pictures that revealed which ones were beneficial to the garden and which […]
Recipe: Fruit Kabobs
Ingredients 1 cup watermelon chunks 1 cup pineapple chunks 1 cup grapes 1 cup strawberries 2 kiwi (peeled and cut in quarters) 6” bamboo skewers 1 cup light strawberry yogurt Directions Place fruit chunks on bamboo skewers. Place fruit kabobs on platter. Place yogurt in bowl. Serve kabobs with yogurt on the side. Source: USDA […]
Continuing Our Impact with Remote Lessons
We provided remote lessons with garden activity kits to more than 600 students at 13 schools each month this winter. The activities were enjoyed by leaders and students alike. In January, students were given a lesson on Seed Dispersal and then used seeds to create Pinecone Bird Feeders. Students had fun getting their hands into […]
Rising to the Challenge: Online Lessons & Garden Kits
Like most organizations, H.O.P.E. Gardens had to adjust to changes brought on by Covid-19. When we learned that some schools were going fully remote and outside organizations were restricted from offering their programs in person, we had a decision to make: could we adapt to this new challenge or should we wait out the storm? […]