The garden got off to a great start at the end of Earth Week last Friday. At recess, students from every grade pitched in to ready the soil for spring planting. We were lucky with the weather. The sun shone and the garden was happy to welcome the children after the long winter.

The boys and girls used rakes and trowels and garden forks to turn over the soil and dig up weeds.

Some plants were already growing. The town Girl Scout troop planted bulbs last fall, and many came up, such as this daffodil.

Stems on the blueberry bush next door are putting forth buds that will soon be leaves. In a year or two the bush will bear blueberries. 

Students were very energetic about digging. They had the most fun removing grubs from the soil and putting them in a plastic pie pan for everyone to see and go, "Eww!" 

Pop quiz: Grubs are bad for a garden because:

a. They are squishy and slimy and have lots of legs. They burrow into the earth away from the sun, which might explain their boring, blah color, or non-color, which resembles tired modeling clay.

b. They eat hot dogs.

c. They eat the roots of live plants. 

(A+ for you if you circled, "c".)

Below you will see a Ph soil tester. It tells you whether the soil is acidic or alkaline or a perfect balance of the two, which helps you know what nutrients to add to grow vegetables. 

It's generally a good idea to add peat moss and compost to enrich your soil. The dark dirt in the white container is compost from the store.

When the store-bought stuff ran out, the children added home-grown compost to the beds. We made it from leaves and stems and rotten vegetables and last-year's weeds mixed together in the garden compost bin.

The best part about the day was watching the boys and girls get excited about working in the garden. Even when teachers allowed the students to go play kick ball or four square if they wanted to, some children stayed keep digging and ousting grubs and discovering worms. They had a blast.  

So did this guy. 

And that was last week. 

This week, the children watch and water the seedlings they planted today in paper cups to sprout in their classrooms. And, they wait for sun to help the new vegetables grow so planting can begin. The garden's waiting, too.

- Holly