Friday, November 14, 2008

Garden Party 2008

Our garden party was a great success!!
Unfortunately the parents were stuck in their meeting a little longer than expected, so they were not able to be there, but the kids pulled it off with help from the wonderful Potentials staff.

The kids chose whether they wanted to plant vegetables at the base of the trellis, plant flowers around the tree, paint the shelves, or set up the worm experiments.

Ashtyn and Frankie chose to plant veggies. After adding some fresh soil to the beds that Xavier dug, they planted cucumbers, squash, and pole green beans, with help from Jodi. They were on their bellies so they could access the ground better and work on goals at the same time. Great job girls!

Brenna chose to plant flowers around the tree with help from Faydel.

The flowers look beautiful!


Ari, Caitlin, Joao and Haley chose to paint the shelves.

They had help from Kim and Keiser University OT student, Ashley

It is coming along great!

Ronald, Shoma and Bruno, Will and Wes chose to help harvest the worm castings and set up one of our worm experiments. This group had help from Gabriella, Helen, and Bekah.
First we harvested the worm castings by pouring some of the bin contents on to a screen and shaking the screen as the castings fell through into the black bin. Anything that was left in the screen went back into the bins. The worm castings looked like dark rich soil without a smell, and the left over contents was mostly uneaten leaves. Worm castings are believed by some to be the best fertilizer on earth. Maybe we will experiment with different fertilizers later in the year, and find out for ourselves!

Next, Helen, Ronald and Alan drilled holes in three tupperware bins. Then we filled one with moistened newspaper strips, one with food scraps, and one with a combination of the two (paper and food). Finally we added 25 worms to each bin. We are waiting to see which bin will be composted by the worms first. Any guesses? You can cast your vote on the left side of the main page of this blog. Justin used our new switch accessible camera to take all of the pictures in this posting with help from Alan to aim the camera.

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