School vegetable garden-because every kid deserves a fresh tomato!

I am so behind on posting about some ongoing garden projects, but I'm really excited to get my first post up today about the garden at the preschool. I offered to lead the charge on the veggie garden.


So the whole family pitched in one Sunday morning and after picking up lots of good compost and soil, we headed up to school. The garden was a good 6-9 inches low on soil, but we first noticed lots of nutgrass. They had really let it multiply over the past year as the garden lay unplanted. Our one and only chance to dig it out before veggies go in.

But after 2 hours of digging and 3 buckets of nutgrass seeds, we called it quits and moved on to getting the soil and compost in. We hauled and opened bags and Jack helped rake the soil smooth.

After getting the main veggie garden soil in, we moved on to a pet project of mine, an herb spiral. I had read about herb spirals and it seemed a perfect fit for the school, where they wanted some herbs but didn't have a big enough garden for the veggies and herbs, and they wanted butterfly attracting plants, which so many herbs are great at. I had already drawn the circle on the ground- about 3 feet across- and laid newspapers down to block grass coming up. Next was the stone layout of the spiral. Then lots of pea gravel for the tallest parts of the spiral to insure good drainage and then good garden soil on top.
The vegetables (tomatoes, cucumbers, zucchini and bush beans) all went in the first week of April. Herbs went in at the same time with (in order from top to bottom) rosemary, oregano, dill, parsley, thyme, and basil. The uppermost herbs get the best drainage. I planted swiss chard intermittently throughout both the veggie garden and herb spiral because its just such a great, versatile, long lasting vegetable to have around.

My next update will cover how everything is going.