El 20 de junio en la huerta

¡Hola amigos y amigas de la huerta!

I'll write some of this in Spanish that your Lower Schoolers should be able to understand and translate for you. There are also some notes in English for all.

El miércoles, Profe Anny visita la huerta. Hace sol y hace mucho calor. Las plantas crecen, pero ¡la huerta tiene mucha sed! 

Profe Anny rega las plantas con la regadera verde. (And once I got the hose hooked up, I also watered with 'la manguera'.)

Los frijoles del Grado 3 crecen mucho! Quieren subir el maíz, pero ¿Dónde está el maíz? 

¡Aquí está el maíz del Grado 2! ¡Mira cuanto crece!

In our 'Tres hermanas' garden, the corn provides a pole for the beans to climb, and the beans make a tangle of vines that discourages raccoons from poaching our corn when it ripens. The bean plants also set nitrogen in the soil, to help replenish the nutrients the corn uses up. We didn't plant the third sister-- 'calabazas'-- here this year, because they never do very well. We're hoping our 'frijoles' will do the job of shading the soil so the weeds don't grow. And there may be a secret bed of 'calabazas' somewhere else in the garden...

Las papas del Grado 4 crecen mucho también. (Next time I visit, I'll bury the plants with straw so 'las papas' can start to form under 'la paja'.)

Los pimientos, las cebollas, y los tomates del Grado 5 y las zanahorias del Grado 1 crecen también. (I didn't take close-up pictures of the carrot plants this week, but they're doing well.)

Profe Anny planta más pimientos porque los otros no crecieron. (The tiny plants we had started indoors didn't survive the heat and dryness, so I put in some bigger plants.)

También planta la albahaca alrededor de los tomates y los pimientos. La albahaca les da mucho sabor. (Basil gives flavor to peppers and tomatoes as they grow, and also in 'una ensalada de tomates' after the harvest!)

The Kinder Garden is growing nicely. 

Look at the beautiful squash plants:

 tomatoes and basil:

 and bright orange nasturtiums!

There's a surprise planted nearby for next year's Kinder niños y niñas to harvest with Profe Kristen!

 

The hillside above our gardens is covered in a riot of orange daylilies.

¡También hay maleza en la huerta! (WEEDS!) Profe Anny quita la maleza.

 ¡Adiós, verdolaga! 

(Even though purslane is an edible plant, we don't want it here.)

¡Adiós, bledo! 

(Even though some types of amaranth produce an edible grain, and this redroot pigweed can be a helpful companion plant with beans or cucumbers, we don't want it here.)

 ¡Adiós campanilla!

(I'm not sure if this is really a kind of morning glory, but I know it likes to grow among the 'frijoles' and pretend it's a bean vine. ¡Tramposa!)

Visitors and Volunteers Welcome!

Please come out and visit the gardens this summer! I (Profe Anny) will be at Lower School next Wednesday, June 27, and the following week on Tuesday or Thursday, before or after the holiday, then again on Wednesday July 11. I'm usually there until 3:30 or 4:00, so let me know if you plan to come. Parents can come after dropping kids at camp, or parents and kids can come after camp at 3:30. I'd love to train some volunteers who would be willing to check on things while I'm away later in July.

Call or e-mail:
Anny Ewing
610-608-3396
anny.ewing@westtown.edu

El 13 de junio en la huerta

I (Profe Anny) made my first summer visit to 'la huerta' yesterday and found lots of exciting things happening there. Here's what it looked like before my son Sam came by and trimmed all the pathways.



¡Gracias, Sam!

Kinder (soon to be Grado 1): ¡Las zanahorias crecen!

Una por una, las zanahorias aparecen entre los tomates y las cebollas de Grado 4/5. (The carrots just have tiny feathery leaves right now, but they are ready to start growing bigger in the shadow of the tomato plants, among the onions planted by 4th grade for their 5th grade salsa garden!)

Grado 1 (soon to be Grado 2): ¡El maíz crece!

Dos plantas crecen juntas (Two plants are growing together).

Profe Anny quita una planta. (The corn will grow better if we thin the plants, so Profe Anny pulled up the extra ones. She tried planting them in empty spots-- we'll see whether it works better than it did for Carlos!)

Grado 2 (soon to be Grado 3): ¡Los frijoles crecen! 

Hay un problema... ¡El conejo come las plantas! (If it's not a rabbit, it may be a deer-- just the plants on the outside edge of the garden had been nibbled on. We'll have to get the fence up soon...)

Grado 3 (soon to be Grado 4): ¡Las papas crecen! 

Las papas de las niñas crecen bien y las papas de los niños crecen bien. ¡Todas crecen fantásticamente! (Next time I'll bring some straw so we can cover the potato plants as they grow and make room for more papas to form.)

See the potato plant that 'volunteered' in the tomato garden this year? It's on the left, outside the cage in the next picture. I had to move it over to the 'papas' beds, because I found out 'tomates' and 'papas' don't like to grow together. Keeping fingers crossed that it will transplant safely.

Grado 4 (soon to be Grado 5): ¡La salsa crece! 

Los tomates crecen bien. Los pimientos crecen bien. (I had to replant the jalapeños and the sweet peppers. The ají is doing great.) 

¡El maíz de Oliver crece bien!

El cilantro forma las semillas. (The seeds of cilantro can be replanted, or ground as coriander powder. We use it in our 'gallo pinto' recipe in 3rd grade.)

El conejo comió el perejil de Profe Kim... (I think the bunny missed one parsley plant back under the cilantro.)

La melisa (lemon balm) y la menta crecen bién!

Kinder Garden:

Maya and Emma came to weed the Kinder Garden with T. Courtney.

Please come visit 'la huerta' and watch it grow this summer. I hope to be there once a week to weed and water. Let me know if you would like to join me.

¡Hasta la vista!

Profe Anny

Anny.Ewing@Westtown.edu