Tomatoes

Here are the tomatoes before they started to fruit.

Holiday salads

The carrots and onions were added to the salad mix for the Winter Break Holiday Salad and Garlic Bread feast! For the 2nd time, the class got together with the food trends class and the two classes had home grown salad and (this time) garlic bread before the holiday break. This capped off a fall where the class has planted seeds for vegetables, propagated cuttings for ornamental plants, learned about the life cycle of annuals, studied flower, root and other plant structures, learned about plant taxonomy and made holiday craft projects with horticultural products and grown paper whites for the holidays. The class also went outside and planted daffodils in the rain garden and studied seed heads on the rain garden plants.

First tomato flowers!

The seeds planted the first week of school have produced some fine young vegetable plants. Swiss Chard, Kale and Spinach are all growing well and have been sampled as they grow. The tomatoes are now about 2 1/2' tall and the first flowers are on! The peppers are a bit slower, but the ones with more soil are much bigger than those with less soil.

Artful Rainwater

http://artful.247exhibits.com/files/uploads/artful/8731223914560ASLA_2008_ARD_.pdf

This presentation shows many stormwater gardens (rain gardens and bioretention cells) which have been designed for both aesthetics and function.

LIDC Miscellaneous Blog

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University of Georgia Horticultural Trial Gardens

http://ugatrial.hort.uga.edu/index.cfm/fuseaction/about.main/index.htm

This site has a wealth of information about what is growing well at UGA for horticultural applications. Week by week, information is posted about a wide range of plants.

Slow Food Foundation

http://www.slowfoodfoundation.com/

http://newsletter.slowfood.com/tm/02/tmeng.html

People think of animals going extinct. These sites focus on plants, particularly food plants, which are going extinct at an alarming rate. The concept is that we need the biodiversity of all these foods. Read it for yourself! What do you think?

Where does food come from?

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/12/magazine/12policy-t.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1

As the class grows food in the growlab and green house - the tomatoes look great! - with the thought to grow a salad by Thanksgiving, it is worth reflecting on the time it takes to grow the food we eat and how it is produced. This article by Michael Pollan provides plenty of "food for thought" on this issue.

Sustainable Horticulture site

This is a Seattle Based site: "through this page, we hope to help visitors to recognize and apply sustainable management practices as preferable alternatives to current practices. Sustainable or ecologically friendly landscapes, whether in public greenspaces or privately owned, consume less water, have reduced needs for fertilizer and pesticides, and avoid the use of non-native, invasive species.:

http://www.sustainablehorticulture.com/

Installation Day

Garden Prep and layout

Prep work, City of Rockville crew tilled the site

Rain Garden site -- by the tennis courts

Rain Garden site scouting

by the snack bar? over by the tennis courts? so many possibilities!