What can I plant now?

The winter isn't quite over, so it isn't time to start plants that have seeds inside them (tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, squash). We still are needing to plant cold crops. Check out the planting guide for Zones 7 & 8 for a guide of what to plant when: planting guide

Planning this year's garden

As the weather starts to warm up, many start to think about gardening. Before the school year is over, there is time to still do some planting. For a successful garden it all starts with planning. Take this publication and start planning your garden. Ten Steps to Successful Gardening

Getting "Bugs"

Bug mouth parts are the focus of this lesson. Here is a video that helps youth understand the four mouth parts: Bug Bites!

Gardens are for school, afterschool, and summer programs

Here is a resource that tells about ways to plan and create gardens, but also how to program around gardens. Great bunch of ideas for educating young people!!

http://www.healthiergeneration.org/uploadedFiles/For_Schools/1_SnacksMeals/GardenTK.pdf

National Science Foundation, Informal Science Education Grant

NSF (National Science Foundation) offers grants for Informal Science Education. This is education that is outside of the formal school day. Therefore, it is specifically for afterschool programs and out of school time. The entertain full proposals up to $3M for up to 5 years.
Arizona Cooperative Extension is writing a proposal for this money. The basic plan is to train afterschool providers, 4-H leaders, and anyone working with youth in the rainwater harvesting, gardening, and entrepreneurship modules of the curriculum taught at the Technology Conference in Sierra Vista in July. We will not be focusing upon nutrition for this grant as NSF does not want a health focus.
In addition to the creation of gardens, our proposal would work with technology in that we would teach youth about making videos, taking digital photos and enhancing them, using free online applications, and posting to a statewide blog to communicate with other sites. Youth will utilize three different planting mediums of in ground, raised bed, and straw bales to plant their gardens and analyze the results.
Would your students be interested? Would you be willing to spend time with youth in an after school time period? Do you think we could get families to duplicate these gardens in their homes?
Let us know what you think? Post a comment below!

Adding STEM education

School gardening isn't all about the gardening. Use the rainwater harvesting to create a real life applied math lesson by figuring how much rain can be collected from a certain amount of rainfall. The formula is rainfall x square footage x .63 (gallons per inch). Then divide by the number of gutters. Times by the number of rainwater harvesting tanks.

Or, measure the amount of water used by a drip irrigation system. 

Both of these math lessons are explained by this video we made in 2009; http://extension.arizona.edu/4h/content/video/measuring-water-consumption

Or, incorporate photosynthesis into the plant science lessons as described in this video; http://extension.arizona.edu/4h/content/video/plant-germination-video

However, the real lesson that we found that was valuable in the school gardening experience was the wealth of knowledge youth learned as they shot video footage, designed storyboards, wrote scripts, and developed hands-on videos that taught others. Through the use of technology, youth researched science information that they otherwise would never have learned. 

This journal article was written about the project featured in this blog; Growing Gardens with Captured Rainwater . . . and Video

Read the introduction to the school gardening curriculum that was written this year (all aligned to science standards, available upon request):
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1yodPs50NEYzS7VaCZgFjHEFaAPCR904jaccC-aJXibM/edit?hl=en_US#

Curriculum Intro

Seeds and Soil Go Together

There are multiple ways to plant seeds. They can be germinated indoors with grow lights, hardened off and planted in your outdoor garden. You can directly seed them outdoors, grown them hydroponically (in water only), or about any way you choose.
For most of the school and afterschool gardens I have helped create, we have worked on the idea of creating a scientific variable for the garden. That means we have a control plot of a raised or sunken bed with enhanced soil. We enhance the soil with fertilizer, organic matter of compost and/or horse or chicken manure, and then sift the soil to get any rocks out. To determine how much fertilizer to use, we purchase a soil testing kit from the local gardening center and follow those directions.

For directions on making a sunken bed garden, see this video we made in 2009; http://extension.arizona.edu/4h/content/video/sunken-bed-gardening

The variable we use for our gardens becomes our straw bale gardening beds. Yup, straw bales are used as garden beds. The idea is simple. Arizona has poor, rocky soil. It requires a huge amount of digging, tilling, and soil enhancement to grow anything. There are lots of weeds in a traditional garden that require quite a bit of bending. By using straw bales, you can just place the straw bales on the ground, treat them with a fertilizer solution to increase decomposition, plant seeds or bedding plants, water, there are few weeds, and you can even garden from a folding chair so folks in wheelchairs or with back problems can easily enjoy gardening.

For directions on preparing a straw bale garden, see this video; http://extension.arizona.edu/4h/content/video/straw-bale-gardening