Six girls (our of about 16 in the club) plus siblings and moms gathered with Mrs. Friedman on Sunday morning to check on the garden! This meeting was called because there were plants growing that were previously hidden under other plants' foliage, and needed to be discovered and appreciated!
The girls and preschool students have not been at the usual school site, so they haven't seen as much of the garden growth as otherwise, so we made a point to get together and see what's been growing. We are excited for them to go back to their usual campus and eat sweet little tomatoes during recess!
It was super fun and everyone took home a sampling of the produce and lots of flowers! Next year we definitely need to stake the tomatoes early and often- they are just piles of vines in most places!
A great surprise that we forgot we had planted! Star of David Okra- a variety developed in Israel. I (Mrs. Friedman) researched whether it was permissible to grow this variety in light of the recent shmitta year. I called the company to find out when the seeds were gathered (was it during shmitta?) and asked a rabbi knowledgeable in this area what the findings would mean for us halachicly. It was approved!
Our corn stalks grew great and tall, but died at some point recently, and most of the ears were under-developed. It was still fun to peel open the husks and pull apart the silk tassles!
Beautiful flowers grow on bean plants, including our foot-long red Chinese beans that grew over our "mini St. Louis Arch."
We found some more surprises...incredibly overgrown radishes (they probably were ready for picking 3 months ago!) and CARROTS!!! They looked perfect. They were probably slow to mature because of the shade from other plants crowding the raised garden beds, but they survived!
And this is what we think of rotten corn and overgrown radishes!!!
Corn stalk roots are so cool!
The girls with all the produce- tons of tomatoes, red okra too, and the other things described above.
Each girl got to bring home lovely zinnias and fragrant marigolds in different varieties! We grew the zinnias from little tiny seeds...how proud we are that they produced such beautiful flowers!
Discovering what on earth is a tomatillo!!! It's also called a "ground cherry" and is not related to a tomato. They are fun to harvest because you peel back a papery husk and it makes a pretty shape. Eating them? Well...hard to find highly appealing recipes beyond roasted salsa, but we'll have to keep looking!
