Stimulating Science Simulations

Another great day today with John Fisher from LifeLab and 9 other teachers from CCS.  We started out by learning the best way to prep a bed for planting.  My thumb is feeling a little bit more green already!  Even though we got an early start, the humidity was tough to take.  What a great group of educators who stuck it out and planted 2 beds of cantaloupe, eggplant, and tomatoes.  Yes, we realize it is a little bit late to put these in the ground.  If I can keep them watered they might just hang in there long enough to bear some fruit.  Thank goodness for the long growing season of NC. While we were at the community garden, we found that our 2 fig trees were full of fruit that is getting close to being ready to pick.  What a great surprise! Later on, we dissected the soil and prepared paper pots for seedlings.  Who knew that a V8 can makes a great tool for creating a paper pot?!  Everyone left with ample seed packets to go out an...

The turnout for camp is small in number but we had a great 1 st week.  In our absence, the poor student garden had been overrun with weeds.  The campers and my adult helpers took care of that with determination.  Each person claimed a section for themselves, pulled weeds, fed them to the pig to make compost, watered existing plants, transplanted cabbages, and planted some seeds.  We were rewarded with a few cherry tomatoes and when we visited the school/community garden we collected enough blueberries to make muffins from scratch!  On top of that, we found a robin’s nest with an egg.  We’re watching it and wondering if the egg is one that didn’t hatch in the spring or some late bloomer.  As if that isn’t enough life science, we hit the jackpot when we discovered that our young apple trees are getting along nicely.  A golden delicious apple was hanging gingerly from a branch.  We agreed the best thing to do for the tree was to pick th...