garden planning – Seasons In A School Garden

A Year in the School Garden

With New Years Day having just occurred, it’s time to start plotting and planning for the gardens. While some periods of the year are busier than others, working in/on the school gardens happens pretty much year-round here in Colorado. Here is an overview of what happens month by month in my gardens. Keep in mind that here in the Denver area, our last frost is typically mid-May and our first frost can occur anywhere from the last week of September to the first week in November, with it typically occurring the first or second week of October.

January

January marks the start of the garden year and is my planning month. This is when I get to curl up on the couch with a blanket, my laptop and the seed catalogs and figure out what we are going to grow and where it will be in each garden. I create maps of the gardens showing exactly where everything will grow and create spreadsheets detailing what, when and who will plant, and order seeds.

February

February is when I ensure that I have all of the materials I need for seed starting. I’ll inventory all of our supplies in storage and then visit our local greenhouse supply store and nurseries to stock up on potting soil, pots, trays, humidity domes and more. Once in hand, I will organize the seeds and other materials so they are ready to go.

At one of the schools I work at, we have an annual Plant Sale where the students grow all of the plants. The plants are all sold via pre-order so that we know exactly how many plants need to be grown. This presale occurs the entire month of February with all orders being made online. Plants are then picked up the Friday before Mother’s Day.

March

We actually get to start growing plants in March by beginning to grow seeds inside under the grow lights. We will start seeds inside beginning in early March and continuing through mid-April. Each seed variety requires a different length of time to grow before being big enough to transplant outside. Each of our seed planting days is scheduled to accommodate the different plants growing needs. Once the seeds are planted, I check on the plants twice a week to water, raise light height, and adjust humidity domes.

Early March	Mid March	Late March	Early April	Mid April
10-12 weeks	8-10 weeks	6-8 weeks	4-6 weeks	3-4 weeks
Eggplant	Peppers	Tomatoes	Marigold	Pumpkin
Parlsey	Chives	Kale	Zinnia	Squash
Celery	Petunias	Basil	Cosmo	Zucchini
Rosemary cuttings	Impatiens	Calendula	Alyssum	Cucumber
Snapdragons			Nasturtium

Seed Starting Timeline

April

April kicks off the busy gardening season with activity happening both indoors and out. Inside we continue starting seeds. Meanwhile, the seeds started in March are now being transplanted into bigger pots and continuing to grow under the grow lights.

Outside, cool season plants that you want to harvest before the end of school can be started in the very beginning of April (you can start the end of March here in Denver, but we wait until students return from Spring Break). In the warm season beds, cover crop is cut down and dug into the beds towards the end of the month.

May

May is the when the outside garden finally begins to take shape. It’s a bustle of activity to squeeze everything in between our last frost free day and the end of the school year. We will typically plant cool season vegetables that will grow over the summer at the beginning of May. In mid May, we will plant some of the hardier plants that have been growing inside. In late May, we will plant the more tender plants from inside.

Early May	Mid May	Late May	Early July	Late July
Carrot *	Parsley	Tomato	Beans*	Lettuce*
Potato	Rosemary	Peppers	Summer Squash*	Radish*
Onion (sets)	Kale	Basil	Zucchini*	Cilantro*
Swiss Chard*	Collard Green	Eggplant	Cucumber*
Collard Green*	Alyssum	Chives
	Calendula	Gourd
	Cosmo	Squash
	Borage	Watermelon*
	Marigold	Swiss Chard
	Nasturtium	Pumpkin
	Sunflower*	Corn*
		Beet*
		Okra
* Varieties planted from seed

Garden Planting Timeline

June

Students get out of school the last week in May or first week in June, so June kicks off summer maintenance. Families from the school volunteer to come in to weed, water as needed, and do pest control. I try to stop by the garden at least once a week so I know what needs to be done and can provide direction to families.

July

In July, summer maintenance continues. Throughout July, additional seeds are planted in the garden. In a typical home garden, these plants are planted in May along with the other plants. However, each of these plants begin producing quickly (30-45 days) and are therefore planted in July so that production begins right about when school starts in late August. The batch in late July are all cool season plants and don’t particularly like to germinate in the heat of July. I always cover the seedlings with shade cloth laid an inch or two above the soil (resting on the edges of the raised beds) to help maintain moisture and cool down the soil.

Garlic that was planted back in November as the garden was being put to bed for the winter is typically ready to harvest in mid-July, while onions are ready in late July/early August. The onions and garlic cure in my garage until school starts and produce distribution begins. The gaps left by harvesting these are filled in with the late July planted seeds.

August

Summer maintenance continues into August. Thankfully, here in Denver, the weeds start to slow down as our energy transitions into harvesting. Typically we start harvesting the first week in August with cherry tomatoes, peppers and greens. School isn’t back in session until the last week in August, so the first couple harvests go to families who are taking care of the garden and/or to families in the community who lack access to fresh food. The first harvest with students typically occurs the very end of August.

September

In September, harvest season is in full gear. We harvest in each garden twice a week. Prior to each harvest, I survey the garden to prioritize what needs to be harvested. Fruits like tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, squash, cucumber, and beans are always harvested when ripe to encourage continued production. “One and done” items like carrots and beets as well as greens can be saved for days when there isn’t a lot of other items to harvest, particularly in the later months.

Both schools that I work at operate Farmers Markets one day a week in September and early October. At one school, all of the produce sold is harvested from the garden. At the other school, produce is procured from an area farm.

October

Harvesting continues throughout the month of October with the harvest becoming more and more focused on cool season produce. Typically in the first week of October, I will put up the frost blankets to cover the cool season produce. This helps to protect it from cold snaps and ensure we will have items to harvest into November.

Once the first frost occurs, the warm season plants die and garden clean-up begins. Warm season beds are cleaned out of all dead plant material and cover crop is planted in its place. The water is typically shut off to the gardens in early to mid-October and everything must be hand watered for the rest of the season.

November

With the use of frost blankets, the cool season produce stays growing through mid-November and we continue harvesting. Harvesting at a rate of two classrooms per week, this extended harvest time allows every classroom in the school to participate in a harvest day. If we desired to, we could even extend this harvest longer. But it becomes more and more difficult to organize an entire classroom to harvest when you’re working around snow and cold temperatures. This past year, our temperatures dropped to 14°F on October 30. Through a combination of two layers of frost blankets (one laid directly on top of the plants the second over the hoop frames) and a final layer of clear plastic, the plants all survived this cold. Once all classrooms have harvested, the remaining beds are cleaned out, and garlic and cover crop is planted. I continue to water the cover crop on a weekly basis as long as the temperatures are above 45°F and there is no snow on the ground.

December

December tends to be the only down month in the school garden. By this time of year, I am ready for a break and the only activity in the garden is the occasional cover crop watering. Otherwise, the gardens (and myself) take a much needed break through the next several months.

Square Foot Gardening in the Schoolyard

Note the white string marking square foot sections in the center of the front bed. The onions had just been harvested and we were preparing to plant radishes in their place.

Square Foot Gardening is a popular method of organizing and planning a vegetable garden. It provides an efficient way to grow large amounts of vegetables in a small space. Its core idea is that the garden is divided into square foot sections and that a certain number of each vegetable can be grown in each square foot. I find this method an easy way to plan and plant a garden with students. It allows them to easily visualize the garden, how much space each plant needs and how many plants can realistically fit into the garden. Then on planting day, the square sections provide an easy way to identify where plants go and to divide labor amongst the students.

When I have students plan the garden, they first start by measuring the garden and drawing a map. The map is drawn on graph paper so that every square foot in the garden is represented by one square on the graph paper. You can create custom graph paper online so that the squares are a reasonable size for your students to use. Then they get to decide what goes into each one of the squares. Based on how much space each plant needs to grow, Square Foot Gardening developed a list of how many plants fit into one square foot. I like to provide a custom template designed for that particular garden so that the students have a key to use as they fill in the squares. The template shows what plants are available to plant and how many fit into each square. Students can cut out the template and glue them onto the map or they can draw them onto the map. I have even drawn a scale map on the classroom floor using masking tape to outline the edges of the bed (one a 1’ equals 3” or 4” scale) and the square foot sections and made cutouts out of construction paper so that students could easily manipulate the plan. When I do it on my own, I use Microsoft Visio on the computer so that I can easily drag and drop the squares into the space.

Once the square foot plan is created, you can practice some basic math problems:

We have four squares of carrots with 12 carrots in each square. How many total carrots do we have?
What fraction of our garden is planted in carrots?

In the official Square Foot Gardening method, they recommend using wooden grids that are laid on top of the soil to divide out the garden. Instead, I use cotton string that is anchored at the edges using garden staples. It’s time consuming to lay out but is cheaper than building them out of wood and I don’t have to find a place to store them over the winter. The grids come in handy on planting day, particularly for closely spaced seeds. I don’t find it as useful for large plants like tomatoes that take four full squares per plant. Each student is assigned to plant a single square foot. The grid allows them to easily identify the edges of their planting area and defines exactly how many plants/seeds will get planted into their section. I often define their planting areas even farther by using colored flags or colored popsicle sticks to define what gets planted where (pink flags are for carrot seeds, blue flags are for beet seeds, etc.) and by pre-making the holes using a muffin tin. To help students easily find their square, you can also label each garden bed as a coordinate grid.

Another benefit of Square Foot Gardening is maximizing your area to grow a lot of food in a relatively small space. Unlike traditional farming systems or large in-ground gardens where you need space to walk in between rows, square foot gardening bumps plants right up next to each other, giving each plant the exact amount of space they need and no more. Below you’ll find a list of the plants we grow and how much space they need. Additionally, you can use trellises to grow vining plants upward to maximize the space even more. I use trellises (cattle panels from an agricultural supply store zip tied to rebar posts sunk into the ground) on the obvious vining plants like pole beans and peas, but also plants that typically spread out a great deal like cucumber, smaller winter squash (acorn, delicata, gourds, mini pumpkins) and melons. I make diligent use of tomato cages for not only tomatoes, but also taller pepper plants and eggplants to help force the growth upward and not outward. All of this compacted space pays off. Last year we grew just over 500 pounds of food in under 400 square feet.

Plant Spacing for Square Foot Gardening

Plant	Spacing
Arugula	Scattered seeds
Basil	4/square foot
Beet	9/square foot
Carrot	12/square foot
Chives	2/square foot
Cilantro	4/square foot
Collard Greens	1/square foot
Corn	4/square foot
Cucumber	4/square foot on trellis (2 on each side of trellis)
Eggplant	1/square foot
Garlic	4/square foot
Head Lettuce	4/square foot
Kale	1/square foot
Mesclun/Salad Mix	Scattered seeds
Okra	1/square foot
Onion	4/square foot
Oregano	1/square foot
Parsley	2/square foot
Peas	6/square foot on trellis (3 on each side of trellis)
Pepper	1/square foot
Pole Beans	6/square foot on trellis (3 on each side of trellis)
Potato	1/square foot
Radish	12/square foot
Rosemary	2/square foot
Sage	1/square foot
Summer Squash	1 plant/4 square feet
Swiss Chard	4/square foot
Thyme	1/square foot
Tomato	1 plant/4 square feet
Winter Squash	4/square foot on trellis (2 on each side of trellis)

The one part of Square Foot Gardening that I don’t follow is their soil mix. They recommend a do-it-yourself mixture of 1/3 compost, 1/3 peat moss and 1/3 vermiculite. Here in Colorado, this mix just dries out too quickly and the materials aren’t very sustainable. If we need to fill new beds, I will use a planters mix (50% topsoil, 50% compost) from our local organics recycling company. If you are ordering from somewhere, be sure to check out their product first. I’ve seen way too many “raised bed soils” that are way too heavy and filled with coarse, heavy materials to work well. Also, instead of replacing the soil every year as the Square Foot Gardening method recommends, we use regenerative practices such as minimal till, cover cropping and adding compost to keep the soil healthy and fertile.

I honestly cannot imagine gardening in a school environment any other way. It just makes sense from a planning, logistics and production perspectives. If you’re not already familiar with it, I encourage you to read more. It’s not really that difficult to figure out and the payoffs are huge!

Carrot seeds sprouting inside a square foot

Seed Catalogs as a Learning Tool

As I child I loved to look through seed catalogs. I would leaf through them and imagine what I would put in my garden. Sometimes I would even be allowed to cut out the pictures and I could glue them together to make a garden picture. Now, it is my own two daughters who lunge for the seed catalogs when they arrive. They flip through oohing and aahing over all of the different fruits and vegetables, dreaming about the what ifs….

“Mom, can we have a lingonberry, it’s in our zone. Then we could make our own lingonberry jam”.

“Can we please have the red yard long beans. They look so cool!”

“Ooh, white pumpkins! Wouldn’t those be fun to have?”

Seed catalogs are a great tool to engage students in planning the garden while also gaining practical experience in reading, writing, and math. I always save my seed catalogues each year so that students can use them, but I’ve also had success calling up the some of the bigger seed catalogs and having them send me a classroom set. Students love looking through the catalogs just as much as my daughters and I do. You can harness their excitement over the plants to practice academic skills while aIso planning your garden. Here are some possible ways you can use seed catalogs in the classroom.

Descriptive Writing – Read the descriptions for various plants. Identify the adjectives used to describe the plant. Which adjectives capture your attention more than others. Have students write their own description for a plant to help market the plant as a choice in your garden.

Riddles – Students can choose a variety and then write a riddle that describes the variety. Have other students try to guess what it was.

Compare and Contrast – Have students select two or three varieties of a plant. Read through the description of each one. How are they the same and different. Create a Venn Diagram to capture the attributes of the selected varieties.

Persuasive writing – Choose a plant and write a persuasive essay on why that plant should be chosen for the garden.

Money – Have students pick out plants for a dream garden. Using the prices listed in the catalog, calculate how much the garden would cost. Have students calculate sales tax to get some practice with percents and decimals. Build a budget for the garden.

Measurement – Using the width and height listed for each plant, create a life size drawing of the plant. Put all varieties of a certain species in order from smallest to tallest.

These are just a few of the possibilities to utilize seed catalogs as a teaching tool. The next time you need a way to teach or reinforce a new concept, pull out your seed catalogs. Perhaps they’ll provide some curriculum inspiration in addition to garden inspiration!