Composting with Kids at MSGA was encouraging, giving me hope for the future. Students were actively involved as they demonstrated great knowledge of their school composting program procedures. As I walked around the cafeteria students showed interest in learning about the nutritional benefits of their food. The highlight in my day was when students shared stories of their favorite fruits and veggies. A personal story of a student and her family giving to those in need warmed my heart. That is food justice in it's purest form. Glad to volunteer again, Leah J.
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What a great group of kids at MSGA! Everyone in the PE class was willing try every sample. My favorite was watching kids discover a new food they liked. One student I talked to said he had never even of heard of these foods (or at least of the food in the form that we served it), but he enjoyed all of them. It makes me excited to introduce new, healthy foods to young kids because it makes them much more open to trying new foods later and to continue eating the foods we exposed them to. -MacKenzie Sizemore, Dietetic Intern at Life University All photos compliments of Leah J Students at Marietta Middle School got a visit from Open Hand Atlanta for a delectable broccoli soup taste test! For those of you who are unfamiliar, Open Hand is a non-profit organization that aims at helping people prevent or better manage chronic diseases through nutrition education. We had so many positive responses from students including "it tastes like home" and even "it tastes like Chick-Fil-A soup!" We hope everyone has a safe Thanksgiving and if you or your school is interested in volunteering, Open Hand Atlanta is always looking for volunteers to help facilitate their mission of ending nutrition related disabilities.
For more information: https://openhandatlanta.org To wrap up October Farm to School Month, this weeks lesson is on cover crops! If your school garden isn't on the cover crop bandwagon yet - you should be. But how do we educate students on this sustainable farming method? By making seed bombs!
We hope you enjoyed October Farm to School Month as much as we did! We thought a lesson on kale was only fair in honor of Georgia Organic's Farm to School Month's theme "Kickin it with Kale." This lesson is easy and also includes a kale smoothie recipe.
In honor of October Farm to School Month, Community Sprouts will share 1 new detailed lesson plan for each week of the month for your school to implement for classroom fun! In partnership with Experience UGA, students from Clarke County Middle School got a taste of sustainable agriculture through multiple stops learning about bee keeping, composting, covercrops, and the brassica and solanacae families of plants! If your school is interested in applying these lessons and concepts into your curriculum (psst they also cover school learning standards), we have them posted each week this month in celebration of October Farm to School Month. Lesson 1: Bees
For more Farm to School Month fun check out Georgia Organics resources for other lessons your class can implement this month and stay tuned for next weeks lesson! Additional resources: https://georgiaorganics.org/for-schools/ What a weekend! For any of you folks that missed out or attended a different tour stop for the American Community Garden Association's 2018 Conference, we are here to give a Community Sprouts recap! The first stop for the morning was at our very own Park Street Elementary starting with music from the K-3rd graders and a lesson at the Sensory Garden. Next up, 9th graders Will, TJ and Lenore presented attendees with a lesson on composting which included talks about the nutrient cycle, pests, and ecosystem benefits. Attendees were then sent on there way with some freshly picked produce from the garden. Next stop was the North Marietta Community Garden. Just 7 years ago this space was an overgrown empty lot. Through Master Gardener's and community volunteers the area was turned into a pollinator haven. The garden is currently run solely on volunteers and grant funding predominately through Food Well Alliance. Our last stop was the Giving Garden, a diverse living space located at the back of a local church. Site projects include raised garden beds, bee hives, a "giving pantry" and solar powered rain barrels that waters the garden beds. There is a lot of moving parts at this garden and as a completely volunteer run operation they are eagerly looking for interns and volunteers to learn all that is involved in creating community garden spaces! These community garden stops and so much more were included in ACGA's conference. Participants included many faces across the county involved in the good food movement. If you or your school are interested in connecting further or are wanting to partner with any of the community gardens listed above please reach out. In the mean time, Earth Ambassador workdays will continue as usual, if you are interested in working with one of the wonderful community gardens or schools mentioned above please contact one of the Community Sprouts members. Happy planting! One of the first steps when planting is to access your soil nutrient levels. If you haven’t already, get a soil test at your local soil test lab. This will show you the nutrient levels you are lacking the rate at which nutrient you should apply to obtain the right levels. The main essential nutrients in your soil are nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium or NPK to easily remember. The other essential nutrients are what is naturally in the air around you, carbon, oxygen and hydrogen. Nitrogen is the most important nutrient in your soil and is the most commonly lacking nutrient in garden soils. For a community gardener this is big as funding and space is often short. Thus I bring you The Top 7 Organic Fertilizers for your garden to improve nitrogen levels.
The plethora of organic fertilizers on the market is wonderful and more than likely you will probably end up mixing multiple fertilizers to achieve the best nitrogen levels for your soils. Don't be afraid to play around and have fun with experimenting. This is also a great math lesson idea! You can have middle or high schoolers figure out, based on your soil test report what amounts of fertilizer should be added. We would love to see how your different fertilizer methods worked or didn't work, don't forget to tag us so we can see! Happy gardening, CS .Did someone say free seeds? We did! In preparation for the School Garden Conference just a month away we will be giving away seeds in partnership with Lowes to any schools or members attending the conference. We have a wide variety of seeds to choose from including perennial flowers and cool and warn season crops. If you or your school are interested, send an email to [email protected]. We hope to see you all at the conference! The Earth Ambassadors at Marietta Middle have been hard at work for the upcoming 39th Annual Community Garden Association conference, will you join us!? This is a wonderful opportunity to network with the community garden movers and shakers of the greater Atlanta area. There will be workshops, garden tours and much more - including a compost demonstration by none other than Marietta Middle's own Earth Ambassadors group! Tickets will be available soon and there will also be a few scholarships tickets available to apply for.
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