Spring Potatoes & A Kick Off to 'Get Fit, Eat Healthy'

EPACS students spent last week focused on what it means to 'Get Fit & Eat Healthy'.  Garden Club 1st and 2nd graders spent Friday celebrating the week's theme by working up a sweat harvesting gem-like spring potatoes and preparing a healthy Mediterranean soup using the fresh potatoes and lots of other veggies.

Students were fascinated by the way potatoes grow under the ground and by the different colors of the potatoes . Back in January, EPACS 3rd and 4th graders planted four varieties of 'seed potatoes', pieces of potatoes that each contain at least one 'eye'.  Each eye has the ability to grow into a big bushy plant and produce lots of new potatoes.

Garden Club enjoyed the fruits of their labors by cooking up a quick & healthy Moroccan-Style Chickpea Soup using the new potatoes. The soup got two thumbs up all around!

Students enjoying their soup!

A delicious and simple soup! From Cook's Illustrated 'The Quick Recipe'. Garden Club also added 3 cut up carrots!

In addition to providing lots of great fodder for lessons about plant parts & cooking lessons, potatoes provide great lessons about history, biodiversity, health & nutrition. 6th grade students learned about biodiversity with this game from LifeLab, then discussed the value of having a diversity of plants, as well as a diversity within the plants that we cultivate in our school garden.

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It takes a village...

A rose blooms by the back fence

The garden received a lot of love over the last weekend of April! Nearly 200 volunteers of all ages descended on the garden to weed, plant, mulch, prune, build and repair. The volunteers were a part of the Beautiful Day weekend, a multi-church service project that took place at numerous sites throughout the area.

Winter squash seeds that volunteers planted have already sprouted!

Volunteers planted 12 varieties of heirloom tomatoes.

What a change! With a garden this size (nearly an acre!), it is hard to give it all the attention it needs! I certainly can't do it all -- that is why volunteer events like this, plus our monthly garden work day & the help of individuals during the week are crucial! If you have ever thought about doing some gardening, even if you're afraid you don't have a green thumb, let me know! We can always use the help -- and there are lots of different ways to get involved!

The whole EPACS community was astonished by the changes in the garden when they returned to school Monday morning -- in addition to all the hard work in the garden, the school had a new coat of paint, new benches and landscaping, new ceiling tiles and plumbing fixes, new murals and more! Incredible!

Here's a little round-up of what else we have growing in the garden right now -- it is getting more spectacular by the day as flowers open, seeds sprout and vegetables leaf out and grow taller. Come out and visit the garden and tag your photos on Instagram: #epacsgarden.

Lots of artichokes! Artichokes are a type of thistle.

The spring potatoes are almost ready to harvest.

An aloe plant blooming-- hummingbirds love these!

A cactus blooms.