Adventures with irrigation

This week's class meeting was a rainy one, but boy did we get a LOT done.

Before class, I met with Vinnie, who'd come down from Baltimore to help us install an irrigation system in the hoop house he helped us build earlier this year. We talked through the tasks that students would be helping with, including installing drip tape for both in-ground beds and hanging pots.

I then made my way to Drew, where the Eco-Friendly group paused to check out our productive strawberry plants, harvesting some beautiful berries as a quick snack before traveling to the Windsor Crossing hoop house.

The juicy strawberries were gobbled up in about 2.5 seconds, but don't worry, there will be more... especially for those students and teachers who make their way to the Drew-Freeman garden over the summer break to help with weeding and using the rain barrels to water plants until school begins in the fall. (Just putting the idea out there.) Speaking of watering plants....

The boyscouts who had helped us build the hoop house back in October came by to assist us again: this time with the installation of drip tape, to keep our plants well watered during the hot summer months.

 

While some Drew students installed the irrigation system inside the hoop house, we had some planting to do outside! We had to use 5-gallon buckets to move a huge pile of soil from Ms. Jessica's truck to build a raised bed along one side of the hoop house. (Curious that I don't have photos of us hauling around buckets of dirt, but I guess I was busy lugging buckets back and forth.) Once we'd constructed our bed out of soil and burlap, we got to planting sweet potato slips about a foot apart, each with a spoonful of rabbit manure -- a natural fertilizer that sweet potatoes love. Oooh, those tubers are going to be delicious in the fall!

Once the irrigation team finished up inside, we began to transplant some of the seedlings that Farmer Gail sent along for us to start growing ingredients for the salsa we'll be making with the Entrepreneurs Club in the fall. A number of different heirloom tomato varieties and tomatillos, to be precise. We also had some hot -- and I mean HOT -- pepper plants donated by Kid Power! It was nice to be inside the hoop house planting, since it started to rain while we were outside moving soil around....

The students and adults worked well together. I mean, look at the meticulous spacing of those transplants:

Since we'd been so busy this class, we didn't have a chance to cook like usual. We finished up our meeting with a snack that I'd made: spinach and strawberry salad + black bean burritos and fresh tomato salsa. Not a bad way to end a day, and we made it home safely before the rain REALLY started coming down.