3 July Weekly Update | Gardening - Activities

Education By Gardening - Recent Activities

Saturday, July 04, 2009 12:54 PM

The Education by Gardening program at FHC is blessed this summer with a busy schedule serving children from Fervent Prayer Outreach Ministries Church, Zion Hill Baptist Church, Oasis of Hope Baptist Church, Edna Martin Center, and IPS #51.

This summer's activities have been made possible by grants from the Summer Youth Program Fund (SYPF) Partners: Annie E. Casey Foundation and from Lilly Endowment. Additional aid has come by way of the Lilly Day of Service with donations of man power along with plants, compost, mulch, and hand garden tools, etc., Community Hospital's Wellness Program's donation of a RN's time, Jr. Master Gardener guidance and volunteers from Purdue Extension/Keep Indianapolis Beautiful (KIB), science kits from Lilly's Science Education Outreach, and an intern from the Indianapolis Peace Institute. Of course nothing would be possible without the donation of time and energy from many volunteers who lovingly work with the Indianapolis inner city youth and in our garden.

Summer Education by Gardening Week 4 June 29-July 3

Themes:

Good Bugs - Bad Bugs

Vermi-composting follow-up

Harvesting

Protein

This was a very interesting week for everyone at the Education by Gardening summer camp. First we welcomed six new campers who are members of the Oasis of Hope Baptist Church who wanted to participate in the remainder of the summer program. They came on Monday morning and participated at an accelerated pace to catch up with the other campers who have been attending since week 1. Due to the small number of campers, their hard work, and their leadership abilities, they were quickly able to catch up and will be joining the Friday group from now on. They really were excited to be here and later in the week they stopped by with food wastes for our compost pile. They also brought plastic and newspapers to be recycled.

Tuesday and Wednesday morning's campers along with those on Thursday afternoon from IPS #51 learned about bugs this week and discussed the different parts of an insect's body. They learned which bugs are good bugs to have in the garden and how they are beneficial in several ways:

Predators like lady bugs, praying mantis, and lace wings prey on other insects,

Parasites destroy pest insects by laying their eggs inside them, such as braconid wasps laying eggs on the back of tomato hornworm pests,

Pollinators provide the service of pollinating plants so they will produce, such as butterflies, bees, and wasps,

Poopers (decomposers) recycle dead plant material, like pill bugs and the worms in our vermi-composting experiments.

When campers went looking for both good and bad bugs they found pests on the squash plants, which they helped remove by picking them off. Another big bonus was finding the first squash plant producing fruit this year.

A popular game played by everyone this week was the Chain Food Gang. Campers got to choose which critter they wanted to be and learned what other critters became their food. This was great fun as they "ate" their friends, but also as they learned if there was not any food at the bottom of the food chain, they would go hungry.

In a follow-up activity, campers were especially eager to examine the vermi composting and to "feed the worms." Already they could see how the food wastes from last week were disappearing and how the worms seemed to look fatter and longer. They noticed how difficult it was to pick up the worms, as they dove deeper into the soil to avoid campers' fingers. It is too early in the experiment to see noticeable differences in the vermi-compost bins based on the number of worms initially added. Follow along with us as we monitor them each week.

Tuesday campers finished hand painting this week. The end result of all the various hand painting craft work will be unveiled next week during National Summer Learning Day on Thursday.

Protein was the nutrition topic this week. After learning about proteins all campers ended the day by eating a turkey and cheese roll-up snack.

More marigolds were planted this week, this time along side the rows of tomato plants. Thursday afternoon's campers did much of the planting and also were a big help in watering the garden.

Due to a schedule conflict for July 3 and to being closed on the 4th of July, campers from Edna Martin Center did not attended on Thursday and Friday mornings. Week after next these campers will have a lot to learn to make up for their missing this week. Instead, volunteers worked in the garden pulling weeds and transplanting vegetables.

REMINDER: Next week camp will not be held each day, instead everyone is invited to attend the National Summer Learning Day celebration on 9-July.

Here are some pictures of this week's activities. If you wish to see more, just click on the link for the day of interest:

Monday's newest campers and activities:

Donations for the compost pile