Garden Day August 8th

Wow, the garden is looking great! The plants have grown significantly over the summer. Today is the first day of the 2009-2010 school year, and our students are very excited to see that the seeds which they planted have grown into huge plants (scroll down to see some of the "before" pictures). We have already donated several pounds of fresh vegetables to school families. You can help support our garden by volunteering on Saturday August 8th 2009 from 9a-12p. For more information, send an email to twilkinson@ps7.org.

Thank you,

Todd Wilkinson

Garden Day June 27th: At War With Weeds

Hello all,

Please come help pull weeds in the PS7 garden from 9a to 12p this Saturday June 27th!
The garden is coming along pretty well, however the weeds are very aggressive.
We would greatly appreciate your help.

We don't have many tools, so if you have your own it would help a lot if you brought them.
Hula hoes, shovels and gloves would be great. Also, if anyone has access to a rototiller we would greatly appreciate it.

We're going to be using cardboard and mulch to fight the weeds. Here's an article explaining the process:

http://tinyurl.com/62sdqn

Thanks,

Todd Wilkinson

More About Childhood Obesity

After posting that information from the CDC, I found a couple more articles.

From Yahoo:
http://tinyurl.com/cq842l

From Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine:
http://archpedi.ama-assn.org/

Obesity

I just read a report on childhood obesity from the CDC. It has some important information which can help us stay focused on why the garden is necessary. The report states that "lack of access to affordable, healthy food choices in neighborhood food markets can be a barrier to purchasing healthy foods." Have you tried to find a decent meal in the neighborhood around PS7? Taco Bell? Jimboy's? Shell? Yeah, right!
Here's another quote: "schools provide an ideal setting for teaching children and teens to adopt healthy eating and physical activity behaviors." We've implemented a successful program at PS7 in which all students get P.E. four days a week on top of daily recess. In addition to all of the aesthetic benefits of the garden, it will function as a counterpart to the P.E. program to help our students develop healthier habits.

Here's a link to the report:
http://tinyurl.com/cn36ra

Planting Seeds!

PS7's students began to plant seeds on Wednesday with some help from our friend Barbara Poff. Barbara is a Master Gardener and we greatly appreciate her expertise.
Here's a link to a story about the benefits of kids playing with dirt: http://tinyurl.com/ch5psq

Thanks again to Bill Maynard for donating the seeds!

Thank you to all of the volunteers who came out on Monday in honor oc Cesar Chavez holiday! Here are a few pictures. We're starting to get a small foothold in the garden area. We began planting seeds today.

Prepping for Cesar Chavez Day

Sectioning the area off makes a big difference. Instead of having one huge area, there are several smaller more manageable areas.

There's still a long way to go.