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 […]
Student Chefs Enjoy the Harvest
This week our youth garden chefs at Godfrey Middle School used their culinary skills to prepare a delectable salad. They enjoyed some mouthwatering melon and grilled veggies. Godfrey Middle lost their garden due to a school expansion so the produce was harvested at neighboring schools in Wyoming. Excess produce went home with students. We love […]
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 […]
Feeding the World
The challenge before us…feeding the world. Quite often we are looking to the big companies to rise up to this challenge yet we are all aware of the toll that industrial agriculture is taking on our soil. With the rise in population comes a need for re-thinking the way we grow food. We see […]
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 […]
H.O.P.E. Gardens Receives Farm-to-School Grant
In August, H.O.P.E. Gardens and the YMCA of Greater Grand Rapids were awarded a USDA Farm-to-School grant. This competitive award is granted on an annual basis to organizations that support planning, developing, and implementing farm-to-school programs. H.O.P.E. Gardens will use part of this grant to install a new fence for Wyoming Regional Center, a program […]
Spreading H.O.P.E. During COVID-19
The state-wide closing of schools last March due to COVID-19 presented us with a challenge: How could we involve students in school garden planting when we were not able to work together in person? We also wanted to support students and families while under the stay-at-home order, so we decided that if the students couldn’t […]
Planting in Pots! Watch Makaylee show you how
Planting in pots an easy way to grow herbs indoors.
Makaylee Plants Cress: Cress is Best!
Learn how to plant watercress — it’s easy to grow and tasty in a salad!