Dr. Heather McIlvaine-Newsad and students plan their garden.

The students in Mrs. Standley’s and Miss Hentzel’s third grade classes and Mrs. Streit’s first grade class all got to taste carrots and lettuce, mix soil, and plant seeds in container gardens constructed from kiddie-sized plastic swimming pools.  FIG provided funds for the pools, seeds and watering cans.

FIG Chair Dan Barclay mixes soil with the students.

Dr. Gruver provided the soil, seeds, and lettuce starts.

The students and Dr. Gruver prepare the garden for planting.

Dr. McIlvaine-Newsad provided seeds, snack carrots and lettuce.

Everyone wants seeds!

The students had a lot of fun and will now get to learn something about what it takes to keep a garden growing.  The lettuce, radishes and flowers are all sprouted and thriving.  The students will be able to harvest some of those crops before school is out in early June.  The carrots are up as well, but they will not be ready to harvest until mid-summer.

1. Learn to utilize all of the new freezer space we added last year by preserving more local and homemade food during the next growing season.  I will also throw in the hope that I can learn more about drying fruits, vegetables, and herbs and, a big leap here, actually can something like peaches from Illinois’ Calhoun County.  I loved the canned peaches and pears that my grandmother would give us when I was growing up.

2. Fertilize, compost, and otherwise improve the soil in the three gardens that our family started last year.  Our big compost bins have been collecting our household leftovers and yard waste for over a year now and spring will be the time to take more advantage of all that good compost.  Last year our gardens benefited from lots of help from friends.  Thank you to Bob for the seeds and rototiller, Michael for another round of rototiller work, John for the tomato cages, Bradley and Erin for the strawberry plants, and Ann and Anna for some of the other plants that succeeded in growing vegetables.  The garden has been a great way to connect with friends and neighbors.

3.  It is all about the SYSTEM here.  I hope that as a community we can work to establish a more assessable venue, maybe a food co-op, to purchase and sell local food.  At least one community garden is within our reach as well.  Macomb’s local food system is growing!

I recommend the New Year’s resolution list at Craig Goodwin’s Year of Plenty blog. Year of Plenty is a local food and gardening blog based in the Spokane, Washington, region.  Craig Goodwin describes himself as a Master Food Preserver and Minister at Millwood Presbyterian Church.

The backyard garden of Craig Goodwin (used with permission)

Gardens and farm fields grow plants and help fulfill our dietary needs but they also appeal to and stimulate our senses.  They lift our spirits in different ways.  What shape is your garden and how does it inspire you?Two of our family gardens are basic rectangles without a lot of unique visual appeal, although now that I am writing this I recall that one of them has a section that stretches an arm behind the compost bin to grow sunflowers that emerge above the bin in late June or July… or, they will once we stop planting the sunflowers as late as late June or July.  Our strawberry gardens along the front sidewalk are more unique and I will post a photograph of them next once the snow melts and they start growing again in the spring.  FIG member and Organic Agriculture Professor Joel Gruver published photographs of Macomb’s backyard gardens last summer and I will post some of those photos here on the blog very soon.