Here’s the BUZZ about the next CSG meeting on Wednesday!

The Central School Gardeners are thrilled to welcome local beekeeper Julie-Lynn Wood to our February garden club meeting this Wednesday (February 10th). Julie will be stopping by to share her experiences with raising honeybees in Bridgewater and t0 answer questions about bees, honey and hives (she’ll even have an empty hive for the kids to check out). In keeping with the honeybee theme, we’ll be dipping pretzels in honey for our snack and talking about how it tastes as well as the many health benefits of honey. Likewise, our activity will be a game of “20 Questions” about bees. By the end of the meeting, our members will be honeybee experts!

Julie began keeping honeybees a little more than two years ago, and she loves it. She currently has two hives (shown above) in her yard, and she would like to have one or two more someday. “I started each hive from a three-pound package that had approximately 10,000 bees (and only one queen),” Julie told me. ” By the end of the summer, each hive has approximately 60,000 bees but the population dwindles again over fall, winter, and early spring.  A strong hive in a good season can make as much as 200 pounds of honey (imagine 200 of those bear shaped honey jars!).  My bees have not done even close to that yet.” Julie also talked about the hard time the honeybees have been having over the past few years. It may not seem like a big deal, but honeybees are actually a very important part of our food system. Many of the fruits and vegetables we need to stay healthy rely on the honeybee for pollination. The most interesting fact I learned from Julie, however, is that having a hive in your yard does not mean that your yard will be full of bees, because honeybees will fly three or four miles away from the hive to collect their pollen and nectar.

We will also be watching excerpts from two films about honeybees at the beginning of the garden club meeting. “City of Bees” was created in Denmark and includes some amazing “in-hive” footage; you can watch a short bit of the film here. The second film is a brief video of  Todd Hardie from Honey Gardens in Vermont talking about how to interact peacefully with bees. The CSG would also like to thank Todd for sending us packets of clover seeds for the members along with his video!

For those who want to learn even more about bees, there are many books about bees available that are geared towards kids. One of Julie’s favorite is The Life and Times of the Honeybee by Charles Micucci. A few other good books on the subject are: Honeybees by Deborah Heiligman, The Honey Makers by Gail Gibbons, and The Honey Bee’s Hive: A Thriving City by Joyce Markovics. We will have all of these books at Wednesday’s meeting for the kids to peruse (and we will return them to the East Bridgewater Public Library promptly in case anyone wants to check them out).

Note: the weather forecast for Wednesday is calling for snow, although the amount and intensity of the snow is uncertain at this point. If school is canceled, there will not be a garden club meeting. Should it become necessary during the day to cancel after-school activities, a Connect-Ed phone call will go out to the entire district alerting parents of the cancellation. We will also post an update here on the blog and send out an email to all garden club members if the meeting needs to be canceled. As always, if you have any questions about whether the meeting will be held, please contact either the Central School office at 378-8204 or Kate Strassel at 378-6005.

CSG Fedco Seed Sale Fundraiser Begins Today!

The Central School Gardeners are excited to announce our first Fedco Seed Sale Fundraiser! Between January 27th and March 3rd, garden club members will be selling 25 varieties of premium, easy-to-grow vegetable and flower seeds at just $1.60 per packet. Half of the money from each packet sold is kept by the CSG and will be used to buy materials to create and maintain our organic kitchen garden! Visit our Seed Sale page for more information! To learn more about Fedco, visit their website.

Sprouting seeds – grow your own sprouts at home!

The kids had a great time putting together their seed sprouting projects on Wednesday! Check out a few pictures from our January 13th on our Pictures page.

The sprouts that the kids brought home are edible! They can be added to sandwiches or salads, or simply eaten right out of the bag. Many of the kids were asking what they tasted like, so be sure to encourage your kids to try them. You do not need to add any additional water to the bag. If the sprouts are kept in an area that is warm most of the time, such as a side table in the living room or on your child’s dresser, you will have a bag full of sprouts in just a few days! We’d love to post pictures of the kids’ sprouted seeds on the blog – simply email the picture along with your child’s name and grade to Kate at k.m.strassel@gmail.com, and we will post your sprout photo for everyone to see!

Because sprouts are easy and quick to start and (not to mention incredibly nutritious and tasty), growing sprouts is an ideal  indoor gardening project for kids. The most common way to grow sprouts is in a jar or another container (see instructions for growing sprouts in jars at the end of this entry). While alfalfa sprouts may be the most familiar sprout, there are dozens of different varieties of sprouts ranging in flavor from sweet and crisp to sharp and spicy. Experiment with different varieties of sprouts to see which flavors you and your kids enjoy most. The International Sprout Growers Associations (ISGA) “Good Sprout News” website has lots of information about growing and eating sprouts, including a list of sprout varieties which describes how they taste. If you aren’t inclined to grow your own sprouts but still want to add them to your diet, check out Jonathan’s Organics, a company located in Rochester, MA which grows several types of organic sprouts.

Below are instructions on growing sprouts in jars. Sprout seed mix can be purchased at local natural and health food stores (one example is Good Health on Route 53 in Hanover). Again, we love pictures of your gardening projects – snap some photos of those sprout jars and email them to us!

How to grow sprouts in a jar

Grow sprouts in your own home! Follow these 5 easy steps for sprouting seeds to grow your own health food.

Growing your own sprouts is fun and easy if you follow the six rules of sprouting: 1. Rinse often (2-3 times/day). 2. Keep them moist, not wet. 3. Keep them at room temperature. 4. Give them air to breathe. 5. Don’t grow too many in one container. 6. Keep them in a dark place. The first step is choosing which seeds to sprout. The standard sprout is the alfalfa sprout. This is the sprout often served on salads and sandwiches and your favorite restaurant or deli. However, there are many other seeds that make excellent sprouts, each with their own flavor and nutritional composition. You can sprout barley, broccoli, buckwheat, cabbage, fenugreek, garbanzo, green peas, lentils, mung beans (found in Chinese food), radishes, red clover, wheat, soy beans, sunflowers and more. Always use seeds packaged for sprouting. Buying bulk seeds and grains may seem cheaper than seeds packaged for sprouting, but they may not be worth it. Unless they are packaged as high-germination spouting seeds, only a portion of them will sprout. The ones that do not sprout, will likely ferment and spoil the batch. Do not use seeds meant for planting. They are often treated with chemical pesticides, fungicides and mercury coatings. Also, do not use seeds that have molds growing on them. Molds produce toxins which can cause food poisoning. Growing sprouts in a jar The easiest method is to grow sprouts in a glass canning jar. Any size jar will do. To provide plenty of fresh air, cover the top of the jar with muslin, cheese cloth or nylon mesh screen and secure with a rubber band. You can also buy specially sprouting lids designed for this purpose. Step One: Soaking For a quart-sized jar, put 1 ½ to 2 tablespoons of small seeds (up to 1 cup if using larger seeds like green peas or garbanzo) in the sprouting jar. Cover top of jar with cloth or sprouting lid and rinse the seeds in warm (not hot) water. Drain and refill so that water is about an inch above the seeds. Let the seeds soak 8-12 hours (overnight). Protect from light by covering with a dish towel or placing in a cupboard. Step Two: Rinsing Rinse 2 to 3 times per day for 2 to 3 days. After thoroughly draining the rinse water, lay the jar on its side to spread out the seeds. Do not expose to light. After 2 to 3 days the sprouts should be filling up the jar. Step Three: Removing Hulls After 2 to 3 days the sprouts will have thrown off their hulls. To remove the hulls, place the sprouts in a bowl and run cool water over them. Most of the hulls will either float to the top or sink to the bottom making them easy to remove. (Note: not all seeds have hulls.) Step Four: Harvesting Rinse sprouts in cool water and remove any remaining hulls. Drain in a colander, but do not allow the sprouts to dry out. Place in an air-tight bag leaving room for air circulation. If your sprouts need to develop chlorophyll or carotene there is one final step. (The seed package directions should tell you whether greening is necessary.) Step Five: Greening Once the hulls are removed, place the sprouts back into the sprouting jar or into a clear plastic airtight bag. Put the sprouts in indirect sunlight. It takes about a day for the chlorophyll and carotenes to develop. Once the sprouts are ready rinse, drain, and eat, or refrigerate. Storing: Sprouts will keep for about a week in the refrigerator if you rinse them once every day or two. Be sure to keep the sprouts from freezing as they are frost sensitive. Seeds are easy to store. Put them an a glass jar with an air-tight lid and keep them in a cool, dark storage area. They will keep for a year or more.

First CSG Meeting of 2010 is Wednesday, Jan. 13th!

Happy New Year to all! We hope everyone had a healthy and happy holiday season.

The next meeting of the Central School Gardeners will be on Wednesday, January 13th right after school. Those students staying after school will need a note from their parents or guardians. The meeting will end at 4:30 – pick up will be at the back of the school in the art room (across from the cafeteria).

This month, CSG members will be learning about seed sprouting–and yes, they will be bringing their seed sprouting projects home! We will also be providing some time during the second half of the meeting for “Garden Club Show-and-Tell”. Remember those herb seeds we planted at the information night way back in September? We’d love to see how well your herb plants are doing! Please send an email to Kate Strassel at k.m.strassel@gmail.com if you would like to share your herbs during show-and-tell. We will also have a few of the worm bins we started at our November meeting on hand to check out! We will try to get some good pictures of the grown-up herbs and the worm bins to post on the blog later in the week.

See you on Wednesday!

Worms Eat Our Garbage!

Worms and composting will be the topics of our next meeting on Wednesday, November 4th. We will be starting several “worm bins” that will produce a rich, organic soil amendment to add to our garden soil next spring. Check back next week for pictures from our meeting!

Interested in what we’ll be doing? Want to start your own worm bin? Click here to check out the project.

Green Halloween!

Green Halloween is a website which offers kids, parents, and teachers ideas on how to make holidays a little more eco-friendly, starting with Halloween. There are tips on what to do with the Halloween candy from trick-or-treating that  you  don’t want them to eat; fair-trade Halloween gifts and accessories; resources for healthy and fair-trade goodies to hand out; and fun activities such as coloring pages and the Haunted Hybrid game, where the goal is to help Freida the witch keep her environmentally-friendly broom (it runs on pumpkin juice) in the air. Make your Halloween a little more green this year!

Packing reusable lunches: it’s easier (and cheaper) than you think.

It’s a challenge many parents are faced with each school morning – what to pack the kids for lunch? True, there’s always the option of buying lunch in the school cafeteria. Yet more and more kids (and parents) are becoming increasingly dissatisfied–and sometimes even horrified–by the foods being served in our schools, prompting parents and caregivers to have their kids “bring” instead of “buy”. Overall, the lunches our kids tote from home are usually healthier and taste better than the foods available for purchase in the cafeteria, although some could benefit from a nutritional make-over.

While the quality of the food in the lunches we pack for our kids is–and should be–our primary concern, the amount of waste produced by those lunches also deserves consideration. A typical lunch from home contains: a sandwich in a plastic baggie, plastic wrap, or aluminum foil; a drink in a pouch, box, or plastic bottle; and one to two “prepackaged” snacks – cookies, chips, fruit snacks or candy in single-serving sized bags. Doesn’t sound like much, does it? Maybe not on its own, but when there are hundreds of kids throwing away small amounts of disposable waste every school day, that adds up to a huge pile of trash being generated by our schools each year. Fortunately, there is an easy and practical solution: pack reusable lunches. And it’s easier (and cheaper) than you think.

For some families, an initial purchase of items such as thermoses and reusable containers may be required; before heading to the store, ask family and neighbors if they have any they’re not using, or post a request on Freecycle. Once you have the containers, fill them with foods made from scratch or purchased in bulk. Even a regular-sized box of crackers from the grocery store will yield more servings and less waste than a package of single-serving pouches–and it costs less, too. Insulated stainless steel food containers are great for school lunches because they keep the contents hot or cold for hours – no heating or ice packs necessary. A great way to save time and money on school lunches is to prepare extras of your kids’ favorite dinners–pasta is a great example–and send the leftovers to school for lunch the next day. You’ll know your kids are eating foods that they like and are healthy for them, and all it takes is a minute or two in the microwave in the morning. When you serve cut-up fruits or vegetables with dinner, cut up a few extra and store in small, reusable containers to be added to your kids’ lunch boxes in the morning. A small treat such as a homemade cookie or slice of quick bread in a reusable container and some milk or water in a thermos or reusable bottle rounds out the meal. When your kids get home from school, simply toss the containers in the dishwasher and soak bottles and thermoses in hot, soapy water for a few minutes before rinsing and air-drying. It may seem tedious at first, but stick with it. Before you know it, the process will simply become part of your daily routine, and the money you’ll save by not needing to frequently purchase plastic baggies, paper lunch bags, aluminum foil and single-serving drinks and snacks will be well worth the effort, as will the knowledge that you are doing your part to keep unnecessary waste out of the environment.

Below is a chart which was adapted from the Waste-Free Activities brochure on the Kids Konserve website. Even if you give only one or two of these ideas a try, your efforts will help to reduce the amount of waste produced by disposable kids’ lunches each school day.

DISPOSABLE lunch	REUSABLE lunch
Instead of:	Try:
buying packaged food in prepackaged,single-serving sizes	making food from scratch, and buying food in bulk and in large jars or cans for reusable containers
buying plastic bags, foil and plastic wrap	reusing stainless containers or recycled plastic food kozys
buying juice boxes and water in plastic bottles	refilling and reusing a stainless steel water bottle or thermos
buying paper lunch bags	reusing a cloth, stainless steel or recycled plastic lunch box or bag
buying paper napkins	reusing cloth napkins
buying plastic utensils	reusing utensils

Please Support the Central School Gardeners!

The Central School Gardeners are now accepting donations of new and gently-used garden tools (shovels, hoes, rakes, trowels, edgers, etc.) as well as gloves, hoses, wheelbarrows and other items to be used in the planting of the organic garden next spring. We also welcome donations in any amount from local businesses who are interested in sponsoring the CSG. Please contact Kate Strassel at k.m.strassel@gmail.com or (508) 378-6005 for details on how to donate to the CSG.

Thank you for your support!

First CSG meeting a success!

You can view  more pictures from yesterday’s meeting on our Picture page. Thanks to all of the parents who helped out with the meeting yesterday, as well as Jess and Mariam from the EB High School Key Club.

One thing we learned from yesterday’s meeting is that 90 minutes was a bit too long, especially for some of the younger members. Beginning with our next meeting on November 4th, the garden club meetings will end at 4:30pm. An hour will give us plenty of time to have a snack and complete our scheduled activities. If you have any questions about the time change, please email or call Kate.

Thank you to everyone for a great kickoff meeting! We’ll see you on November 4th.

Join us for the CSG Ground Breaking!

The Central School Gardeners

invite you to attend a

groundbreaking ceremony

of the

Central School Organic Garden

on Wednesday, October 14^th, 2009

at 5:00pm

behind the Central School cafeteria and teachers’ parking area

(rain date TBA)

Please bring your own shovel!

Please contact Kate Strassel at k.m.strassel@gmail.com or (508) 378-6005 for more information.