Hi everyone, and welcome to the Royle garden. As you will see, lots has happened this summer. Thanks so much to the volunteers and their families who've kept the fruits and vegetables weed-free and looking fabulous. I invite you all to stop by to pull some carrots for your lunch, pick a tomato or two, or pause to enjoy the sunflowers and breathe the green air before going back inside school. Here's what's growing on right now inside the garden fence.
We've got green beans, lots of green beans, so everybody - teachers, gardeners - please come in and collect some.
We learned from experience (i.e. by cutting one open) that the watermelons are not ripe yet. We'll just have to admire them for a few more weeks and think about what a great fruit salad they'll make once it's time to harvest them. Question: does anybody know when the best harvest time is for watermelons, as in, when they'll exhibit the ultimate signs of watermelon ripeness?
I’m not sure what kind of squash this is and whether it’s pickable, yet, or if we wait until it turns another color, such as yellow, before harvesting it. Growing nearby is an absolutely mammoth specimen that's hanging so far off the vine it's touching the ground. It might be fun for teachers to take kids out to the garden and make a hide-and-go-seek game of asking the kids to find it. Here it is lurking under the leaves - an amazing feat of camouflage for a squash that big.
No pumpkins are orange yet.
The carrots are ripe as well as peppers, a few blueberries, and some strawberries and cucumbers - like these, if you can see them in the sun glare. Take my word for it. The cukes are HERE.)
In between bouts of polishing floors this summer, the custodians planted more hot peppers. Now pepper shoots are starting to come up. Aren't they cute? (So’s the gnome.)
The peppers are over by the morning glories, which we're hoping will start to bloom instead of spreading leaves all over the place with no flowers to show for it.
And...that's it. Teachers, looking forward to seeing you soon. Parents, get back to filling out those Back-To-School Picnic and Emergency Dismissal forms. Hope everybody's summer was great!
- holly
