Double Digging and Potato Planting!

This week in Garden Club, the Kindergarten through 2nd Grade class planted potatoes. I collected old tires by searching the free section of Craigslist and keeping an eye out for them by the side of the road. We positioned the tires on top of used cardboard, to keep down weeds. Then, the kids stuffed wads of newspaper into the walls of the tires. The idea is that the newspaper will soak up excess water after a heavy rain and store it until the plants need it during a drier spell.  Then the children shoveled a mixture of topsoil and compost into the tires, positioned the potatoes snugly in the dirt, and then filled the tires the rest of the way with compost.

We also watered our raised beds...

And the 3rd through 5th Grade Class were delighted to see that the swiss chard they had planted in a recycled plastic container two weeks earlier had emerged! 

We also had a great group of volunteers on Saturday, April 16th. An English class from U of L rolled up their sleeves to double dig a new garden bed where the children will soon plant squash and watermelon. Double digging is one of many techniques used to prepare a new bed for planting. It entails loosening the soil to a depth of two spade heads as opposed to one. It is a labor intensive technique, but it does a lovely job of aerating the soil in a relatively short period of time.