March/April Update

Up north crocuses have just popped out of the ground, but down here we’re winding down our main growing season and preparing for summer fruits. Our gardener, Roger, is harvesting veges with the after-school Garden Club and trimming the beds back as we wind down for summer. If you haven’t been to the garden recently, check out all the green tomatoes growing and ripening. In the next few weeks, we expect a good crop of peacevine cherry and yellow pear tomatoes and pickling cucumbers. Our gardening classrooms also harvested this month: greens, herbs, carrots, snow peas, and lettuces were abundant. Mr. Londono’s class tried sautéed Asian greens on a pizza and were surprised about how good greens could be.

Slow Food Miami, a garden benefactor, visited us to check on their Slow garden bed (maintained by Ms. Brisuela and Mr. Bogart’s classes), and share advice and ideas with us for next year. We loved the visit and gleaned a year's worth of information in one hour. (Thank you, Slow Food!) They were impressed with the Organic Edible Garden and Smoothie Garden and our Wellness Committee! They loved how it all ties together: gardens + good nutrition + care for the earth + exercise = wellness = nourished students (and happy teachers and administrators)! And we are grateful for the chance to work with and learn from them!

Our garden will continue to grow next year. Last month we were happy to receive a seed grant from Johnny's Selected Seeds (Thank you, Johnny's Selected Seeds!), so we will have more seeds to plant in our garden and to use in the classrooms! And we were thrilled to learn that we were given a monetary grant from the South Beach Wine and Food Festival's family event, Fun and Fit as a Family! (Thank you, Fun and Fit as a Family!) Among other things, this grant will help us build more garden beds so more classes can have a stake in the garden, expand our Smoothie Garden, provide fresh fruit for the Fresh Fruit Tasting Days and buy blenders so the PTA can sell more smoothies…

And speaking of smoothies, have you seen the Smoothie Garden lately? The banana trees have quadrupled in size!!!! And they will be producing bananas by next school year. The gardens will need a little TLC next month as we need to weed, harvest, till, cover and mulch to prepare for the hot months ahead. Please stay tuned. If you’d like to be a garden volunteer, please email southpointepta@gmail.com. Thank you!