In this time of physical distancing, we hope you’ve found ways to enjoy some fresh air outside. Maybe you’ve gone for a walk, done a spring scavenger hunt or even planted a garden. For those of you working hard to teach distance learning as well as those of you supporting your kids as they adapt […]
Schoolyard Gardens 2019 Community Impact
As growing season comes to an end, the garden to do list become shorter and we take inventory of 2019! In 2019, Schoolyard Gardens welcomed 17 new schools to the program. Making a grand total of 220 schools enrolled and actively gardening! This means 17,225 students learned about plant life, nutrition and trying fresh fruits […]
Covering Garden Beds and Jotting Garden Memories
There’s something bittersweet about covering Schoolyard Garden beds at the end of the fall into winter season. The Schoolyard Gardens team uses landscape fabric or burlap to cover garden beds after they’ve been cleared of garden debris to ensure that they’ll be ready for planting come springtime. The fabric suppresses any pesky weeds that inevitably […]
Schoolyard Garden Spotlight: Southwood Elementary Garden Club
Did you know that sweet potatoes are the most sensitive vegetable to freezing temperatures? If left outside in the cold the tubers become mealy and inedible. On the day Southwood Elementary planned to harvest their sweet potatoes, they were very aware that they only had a small window of time before that evenings freezing temperature […]
A Beautiful Night in the Gardens
Kansas City Community Garden’s annual fundraiser, Gardens at Sunset, is a night when friends of KCCG gather in the beautiful Beanstalk Children’s Garden and show their support in both the silent and live auctions. As our biggest fundraiser of the year, these donations will help plant orchards for neighborhoods, build gardens for schools and provide […]
Spotlight: Summer at Barstow—Farmer’s Market
Last week I had the chance to visit The Barstow School. Students attending the Summer at Barstow had the chance to participate in the Barstow Farmer’s Market class again this year. Sarah Holmes, a 7th grade science as well as AP Science teacher, and the Director of School Gardens, leads this class during the […]
How to Water Your Schoolyard Garden
Quick, pop quiz! It lightly showered for an hour yesterday, do you need to water your garden today? Is it enough to water each garden bed for 2 minutes, 3 times per week? The answers are YES, you still need to water your garden even if it lightly showered for an hour yesterday, and NO, […]
Not-So-Obvious Lessons from Gardening
These past couple weeks have been a crazy whirlwind of traveling to schools all over the city to deliver plants and seeds and assist teachers and students with planting their schoolyard gardens. Tiring? Yes! But, so much fun and incredibly inspiring! I love the obvious aspects of a planting season – being in the […]
How to Plant Your Schoolyard Garden!
Hopefully, nobody lost sleep over the threat of frost this weekend! Saturday’s snow was a harmless, wet snow that didn’t accumulate too much. If you haven’t planted your garden, be sure to get planting this week to ensure a harvest or two before school’s out for the summer. Read these tips to help you […]
Fresh Ideas from School Garden Support Conference!
A few weeks ago, Crystal and I had the opportunity to attend a week long conference in Santa Cruz, California. The School Garden Support Organization Leadership Institute was hosted by LifeLabs and one of our generous supporters, the Whole Kids Foundation. Over the course of the week we had the chance to network with […]