Pumpkin Seeds Are Good For You - Roast Some Today.

Click to enlarge then hit back button.

Micro means Small

Grow your own Micro Greens -
You might know words like microscope and micro organism (a living thing too small to see with our naked eyes). Well the prefix, micro is Greek in origin and means, small.

I'm here to tell you about Micro Greens. Micro greens are baby plants just a little older than a sprout. You can grow a tray of these guys in a small (or micro) space in your house, like a window sill or on your patio. Get a few packs of seeds and a take out tray from a restaurant or produce container and you are in business.

Or course your mini garden will need all the regular stuff like, soil, water, sunlight. I put a layer of paper towels over my seeds to keep them clean and moist, then pop on the lid and watch until they sprout. After that, remove the paper towel and wait until your plants are about 2-3 inches high. Then start munching!

These little plants are great because they pack more nutrition than mature plants. Radishes and turnip greens grow the fastest and have a little crunchy spice. Give it a try.

What kind of nutrition can you buy for a dollar?

Nationally, the average amount of money spent on food (after overhead) to provide children a school lunch is about a dollar. Join the Time for Lunch nutrition campaign. It's about creating better nutritional guidelines and choices for kids.

The National School Lunch Program provides a meal to more than 30 million children every school day. By giving schools the resources to serve real food, 30 million children can have healthier options.

By providing children with locally grown fruits and vegetables, we can support local farmers and create green jobs in our communities. By purchasing local food, we can stop wasting oil needed to transport food and reduce the impact on our environment. By raising children who enjoy real food, we can start laying the foundation for America’s future prosperity.

The Time for Lunch Campaign is a project of Slow Food USA, an educational non-profit with the goal of creating a world in which everyone can enjoy food that is good, clean and fair. Read more about the Time For Lunch campaign here. Get involved, write your national legislator to let him or her know that real food is a priority in to you and your school. To find the office's address, go to http://congress.org and type in your zip code.

Start Up

Let's get growing!
We are getting ready to start fall planting. Each year students and MMES volunteers clean, plant seeds, observe, enjoy, seed harvest, then cover the gardens for the next year. Many of the plants that grow are annuals. That means the seeds don't typically re-seed themselves after one growing season. Sometimes we get surprises that come up the from previous year. This year we are planning on planting vegetable and flower seeds. Come help and enjoy watching the gardens and students grow. (photo from 2008 work day.)

Our 7th year of gardening at the Mine!

Fall Gardening
We will be ready to garden when the weather cools a bit. Mid October is my guess. We will post the work date in the MMES web newsletter when we have it. We hope everyone will help us to get the soil ready for another year of gardening!

A few new things we want to try this year are growing mirco-greens, doing a little worm composting, and perhaps a little reward gardening with the character counts program. Stay tuned. More info to follow in the next few posts. Welcome back gardeners!

Our Young Gardeners Like Their Vegetables

Here are the results of Mrs. Reed's Veggie Poll. All these vegetables are growing in our gardens. Looks like a tie between, broccoli, carrots, and lettuce. Way to go! Be looking for the carrots to peek out of the soil. They should be ready soon. Our blogspot poll had broccoli as the winner.

Need Something to Graph?

Check out the poll on this page. Get your friends to vote for their favorite veggie. Come back on March 10th for the results. Make a graph of the results. What kind of graph would best represent the information of the poll? Line, Bar, or Pie graph - You decide.
Remember to eat your veggies!

Click here to see a website to help you make your graph:

Find Your Favorite Marketplace

Thank you to those families who helped donate to our Annual Farmer's Market at the end of January. We raised $80.00 to split between the Local Food Bank and MMES garden program!! Thank you for your support. We were fortunate to have 5 classes help us harvest our produce to sell in the courtyard. Great job gardeners!

Have you ever been to a Farmer's Market in town?
Check these links for places to visit:
Try the light rail to get to this market:
http://www.foodconnect.org/phoenixmarket/
This one is close:
http://www.arizonafarmersmarkets.com/pageRoadrunner/roadrunner.htm
Buying locally grown produce helps our community.

What Are They Eating At Our Nation's Captiol?

We have a new President.
On Jan 20, 2009 our 44th President, Barack Obama, was sworn in. After the ceremony invited guests had lunch together. Because President Obama, and our 16th President, Abraham Lincoln, were Senators from the same state, (Illinois) the lunch had a theme - a tribute to history and Abe Lincoln. The recipes for the lunch were reported to be some of Mr. Lincoln's favorite foods. Abe liked winter veggies like potatoes, sweet potatoes, carrots, onions, and beans.

Our school gardens have some of those same kinds of veggies growing in them right now!

***Look for lettuce, spinach, peas, swiss chard, and squash at the
5th Annual MMES Farmer's Market Jan 28, 2009 (3-6pm) & 29th (1-3pm) in the school courtyard. Donations benefit the local food bank and MMES garden program.

1. Can you think of 3 things Abraham Lincoln and President Obama have in common?
2. What are 3 differences between Mr. Lincoln and President Obama?

3. What is the capitol of Illinois?

Search the Internet with your family to find recipes and perhaps even a cooking video of food served at the recent luncheon. (Great inspiration for our MMES 5th grade chefs.)

A Simple Way to Taste What's Going On.

Welcome back gardeners. Happy 2009. We get requests for this recipe every year. Many classrooms snacked on this before winter break. Remember the best way to feed your brain is by eating fresh natural foods.

Click recipe card for larger view.

What's growing?

Have you seen this?

Hint: You can see this vine with purple flowers climbing near a yellow shrub and close to painted gourd birdhouses.

When Spanish explorers first encountered the Indians of Peru and Brazil, they found this plant used in native folk medicine as a sedative. They took it back to Spain, and then it gradually spread throughout Europe.

There are more than 400 varieties of this plant throughout the world today. Common names are: Maypop herb, Apricot vine, and Passion Vine.

http://www.springboard4health.com/notebook/herbs_passion_flower.html

Red Ribbon Week Red Poppies

The most delightful thing about a garden is the anticipation it provides.
- W.E. Johns

Students planted Red Poppy seeds during Red Ribbon Week. We won't see them bloom until the spring. Watching and waiting will help to remind us to make good choices all year long.

Did you know that in just one pod there are thousands of seeds smaller than a grain of sand? Students planted the Poppy seeds we collected from last year in the gardens this year.

It begins with a seed...

Fall Planting

We have three triangle and one rectangle shaped gardens. Students plant their seeds in the fall. We talk about the size, shape, color of the seeds, what type of plant will grow, and how long the seed will take to germinate or sprout. We are lucky to have (2) planting seasons. Gardeners in states with colder climates are cleaning and covering their gardens for the cold winter.

We know radishes are the first to peek out of the soil. We planted in October and we already have a few small radishes to harvest!