Garden Education and Weeds

In late June Kristi sent out this message:

There will be some activity in the garden this week: on Thursday, June 30 from 9a-noon, we are having a guest lecturer on flowers for the Summer Bridge program; and during July, Tess Diamond (our "edible schoolyard" consultant) will be working with the two other summer programs - the middle school Early College Academy and Summer Scholars (accepted 9th graders).

I decided to check out the guest lecturer, who turned out to be Louis Raymond, aka Louis the Plant Geek.
While I was there Louis spoke to three or four groups of about 20 students each.

He talked about composting, the various vegetable plants and flowers in the garden, and the birds and insects the plants attract, like hummingbirds. Hummingbirds love the pink bee balm pictured below. Their long beaks and the trumpet-shaped petals are a perfect combination.

He engaged the students with questions to draw out what they knew. Since I knew that the tree beds needed weeding, my ears perked up when he asked them "what is a weed?" because it was a question I had been asking myself.

Some weeds are obvious, like crab grass, lamb's quarter, plaintain, chickweed, and dandelion. Other plants in the tree beds looked like they might be weeds, but had flowers or buds that had the potential to be pretty--so what do you do? (That's a BHSEC year 2 student weeding with confidence in the picture above)

Louis's definition of a weed was, "whatever plant you don't want growing in your garden." There was agreement on Lenny Lopate's WNYC recent show Please Explain: Weeds. An expert from the Brooklyn Botanical Garden and a plant researcher from UC Davis said, "a weed is in the eye of the beholder."

The black eyed Susans in the picture above are "volunteers" and the tree bed is overloaded, so do I pull them? They are so pretty!

Enough about weeds. Here are some pictures of the organic edible garden in our new raised beds:

Overview of the edible garden

Strawberries--I assume they will bear fruit next June.

Chard [picture by Tim Murry]

Chard and nice organic soil

Lentil marker placed by the middle school students working with Tess Diamond our "edible schoolyard" consultant

Young tomatoes photographed on June 30th

The same tomatoes on July 11th [photo by Tim Murry]

Chives

Basil and parsely

Marigolds are a common companion plant in vegetable gardens. They have an anti-weed and insect repelling effect which is beneficial to the plants that grow near them.

Mesclun

Here's one last photo of some pretty pink flowers that Tim took when he went to check on the sprinkler system. Does anyone know what it's called? It kind of looks like a pink version of purple loosestrife (an invasive weed introduced from Europe) but it also looks like it could be a flower called Veronica. Leave a comment and let us know what you think.