Monthly Archives: June 2021

Whenever someone takes produce from the Ancona garden, we estimate how many servings they harvest and record it in a log. We use the USDA definitions of servings. One egg is a serving. A cup of fresh kale is a serving. A half-cup of strawberries is a serving.

This system is less perfect than simply recording the produce by weight, which is what most urban farms do.

But it’s far better suited to the lives of our families. Most parents can’t easily picture two pounds of broccoli. But they know exactly what the equivalent, 10 servings, looks like on the plate and would be thrilled if their child ate two servings.

There also many tougher questions that we can’t answer without harvest data, questions like:

• Is our harvest growing with each successive year?
• What crops produce best on our campus?
• What vegetables are most popular with students?
• What’s the financial contribution of the garden?
• What should we grow next year?
• Are we have a meaningful impact on families’ diets?

This spring, Ancona was fortunate to win one of ten grants given nationally by the Herb Society of America. The grant paid for the supplies needed to build this rolling herb garden destined for our playground. Ancona grandparent Gary Neighbors did the carpentry. Students filled it with growing mix and transplanted in lavender, chamomile, mint, basil, rosemary, thyme, and lemon sorrel.

The grant also supported a series of garden lessons, such as making our own herbal tea blends and preparing a salad with a fresh-herb vinaigrette. The focus wasn’t just on herbs’ flavors but on learning to mindfully prepare tea and other traditional dishes by hand. With herbs, a big part of the experience comes from eating slowly and savoring the freshness.

Finally, students started enough lavender and chamomile plants for third through sixth grade students to take one of each home.

Intrepid parent volunteers have kept our crops watered through this unusually hot, dry spring.  The first thunderstorm of 2021 didn’t arrive till this past Saturday. We could be in for a prolonged drought. Please consider signing up to water plants and feed the chickens on weekends. Even if you’re not signed up, you can grab the hose and water anytime you’re at the garden.

Watering properly takes practice and focus. Students tend to flick water at the plants, or water weeds instead of crops, or dump water on leaves and ignore the root area. So we practice a lot, and students have really improved.

Besides rain, the best way to water garden crops is via an automated drip and sprinkler system. Such a system deliverly exactly the right amount of water to the plants at the perfect time (usually early morning). This summer, hopefully there will be time to install minisprinklers in our largest garden bed.

If you have a home garden, here are some watering tips to sustain your plants without wasting water. Overwatering is a common problem, and it often contributes to plant diseases.

This year we successfully grew the flowers handed Ancona graduates at the final assembly of the year. It’s taken a few seasons to get the timing right; early June is after most spring flowers are done and before the summer blooms open. We’ve found success with dianthus, also known as sweet williams.

This year’s graduates started more plants, so that next year would should be able to give every graduate a small bouquet rather than a single stem. The symbolism is fitting: Every class plants for the class that follows.