On Wednesday May 4th, Brian, Jack and Charlie and their parents volunteered at our community garden plot. We had been watching the sprouts grow since their planting 4 weeks earlier. They had survived a big snowstorm, and had erupted out of the soil as a few too many seeds had been planted in the excitement of the task. We met to weed the garden, cultivate the beds, and thin out the sprouts that had been over-planted by our enthusiastic gardeners. We learned that with some sprouts it didn’t matter how thick they were, such as the peas and the arugula, but others needed to be thinned as they were root vegetables and couldn’t grow if they were too close together. With teacher and parent guidance, we thinned out radishes, carrots, and beets, as well as some of the larger leaf vegetables such as lettuce and chard.
We were able to keep the radish sprouts fresh in a Ziplock bag with ice cubes provided by Brian’s mom, Lauren, to bring back to school for snack. On May 5th, the children were able to enjoy the first taste of the garden harvest – radish shoots! The children guessed what the shoots were by the flavor, with some getting them correct, and others guessing mint and other herbs. We also studied the radish shoots and saw how the root already resembled radishes in color and shape.