Off to a great start

Our first meeting with many enthusiastic beginning gardeners

Photo from Mrs. Friedman's trip to Home Depot to buy supplies- they cut all the wood to order, and helped carrying about 30 bags of soil to my car!!

During our work party on Sunday morning we built and painted the garden beds, and in a recess work party on Wednesday we filled the beds with a combo of top soil and garden soil meant to help vegetables grow well.  The girls did a good job sharing hammers and paintbrushes, and a lot of teamwork happened as they carried so many heavy bags of soil to the right places.

We built four beds like the ones pictured here.  Everyone got to do some of the hammering and screw-drilling.  The girls will take turns with different planting tasks.  For the first day we planted the live plants that were purchased: eggplants, tomatoes, peppers, and marigolds.  Everything else will be planted from seed in our next work party, Sunday morning.

Still to do:
plant seeds for corn, cucumbers, okra, zinnias, snap peas, carrots, and everything else
nail in hoops for beanstalks
stake tomatoes
build bed in front of school, paint, plant, etc
let every girl paint her name as a founding member of the club

work party time!!

Shavuah tov.  We are looking forward to seeing all the enthusiastic girls tomorrow at 8:30AM in the playground at schooll.  Parents and siblings are welcome to stay and play or help.

SUNDAY WORK PARTY NOTES 

-Please bring: clothes for painting and dirt (can be skirt turned inside out,) hat with a brim, water bottle, complete Middos Program change of clothing!!!

Optional to bring: please bring large paint brushes, small trowel (shovel), medium/large trowel, hammer, garden gloves.  WE ALSO NEED CARDBOARD boxes to kill grass under garden beds.

-We will conclude our work party and make time for cleaning up and changing clothes before the Middos program, so the girls can go inside for that at 10:20am.

-If anyone wants to provide fruit, lemonade, cups, or something like that for the group, bring what you want!

Parent update after lunch meeting

Hi everyone,

Our first meeting today was special for the TPG Garden Club.  Because you signed your daughter up, she will be part of the founding group of TPG gardeners, and will forever have a share in this really valuable new beginning at TPGS.  I plan to stay involved as much as possible from here on out, but I also hope it will become an integral part of the school which teachers and whole classes help maintain and further even independent of my involvement. I hope they will learn many valuable world/nature, science, spiritual, and social/personal lessons from being involved and get a lot of enrichment from it.

14 girls came to the meeting, including a few not-yet-registered.  Please bring $10 to school tomorrow or Thursday AM at the LATEST.  This is crucial for us to start out with as much materials as possible.  (I have to go buy things.)  Although the "work party" will be fun, we want to ideally set everything up in one shot, rather than doing initial set-up of the garden for weeks to come.  Plant a lot now, harvest more sooner.

SUNDAY WORK PARTY NOTES (I will probably remind you of this with an email on Motzai Shabbos): 

-Please arrive/drop off anytime after 8:30am.  We will be in the playground side of the Torah Prep Girls School.  I would love to have a couple parents stay and help for any amount of time, please let me know if you can!

-We will conclude our work party and make time for cleaning up and changing clothes before the Middos program, so the girls can go inside for that at 10:20am.
-Please bring: clothes for painting and dirt (can be skirt turned inside out,) hat with a brim, water bottle, complete Middos Program change of clothing!!!

-Optional: large and small paint brushes, small trowel (shovel), medium/large trowel, hammer, garden gloves

-If anyone wants to provide fruit, lemonade, cups, and pretzels or something like that for the group, bring what you want!

See you Sunday, and email with any questions.

Kate