Springtime is here! Week of 4/1/19
Springtime is here! This is always an exciting time for our school because it means we get to choose all the new additions to the garden. This year we will be focusing on heirloom annuals and perennials from Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds. The reason we chose heirloom seeds this year, and especially Baker Creek, is both the nutritional value of the vegetables and the diversity of appearance. Baker Creek has an awesome mission, and catalog that our students were able to look through to make choices about what we want to grow.
Traditional veggies that you see in the grocery store have largely been bred with an intention for things like shelf life, transportability, and sweetness – all important factors if you want to sell your vegetables at a grocery store that appeals to carbohydrate loving diets. But in the past, annual vegetables were bred for their nutrition, hardiness, and diversity – and nature has such wonderful diversity! Many of their seeds have stories to them like being found in a 16th century abbey garden, or part of an immigrant family’s journey to the Americas. Some are also cultural connections to other continents that we explore in our curriculum. These stories connect the mind and the heart to the nutrition, and help create a natural respect for the food we put in our bodies.
We feel that growing food is quite magical, and more so when we find beautiful surprises in the garden. Red and Black carrots, speckled beans, and wrinkly melons all serve to hone the senses and expand the visual appeal for food that nourishes. We like the weird here, and often times so do our kids. So without further ado – here is the list (with links) they came up with:
Peppers
Murasaki Purple
Orange Bell
Lipstick
Yellow Monster
Radish
Chinese Red Meat
Chinese Shawo Fruit
Summer Squash
Costata Romanesco
Lemon Squash
Herbs & Pollinator Friendly Flowers
German Chamomile
Thai Double Blue Butterfly Pea
Anise Hyssop
Elephant Dill
Red Roselle
Bronze Fennel
Milkweed
Takane Ruby Buckwheat
Florence Fennel
Melon
Royal Golden Watermelon
Carrot
Pusa Asita Black Carrot
Pusa Rudhira
Cosmic Purple
Celery
Chinese Pink
And of course we are looking forward to raspberry, blueberry, blackberry, goji berry, currant, cherry and Huckleberry coming in for the Summer. Some of these plants will be great to see pollinators and butterflies settle and lay their chrysalis, others will be grown strictly for their unique colors and properties when mixed in with our cooking projects. We are really looking forward to this wonderfully diverse set of crops this year, cheers to wonderful experiences in the garden!
