Danielle Coleman
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The Horticulture Class was started was because a few students wanted a different way to earn a science credit, so they cleaned up the greenhouse and started planting vegetables. There were two long-term plans for the garden, one was that we would donate all of the produce to Linn Benton Food Share for families who couldn’t afford to eat, and the second was to someday in the future set up a salad bar in the school cafeteria so kids could have the choice to eat healthier.
The very first step for me when I came into the Horticulture Class was to start caring for the plants that the students grew first quarter.
The class also had to draw a diagram of the garden, to know how big the garden was and where we wanted to put our plants when it was time to plant them into the garden. After we made our diagram, we planned and planned, and then we planned some more. The reason that we planned so much was because we didn’t want to make a mistake if we made one mistake in the beginning then the whole project would have been wrong. After wards we started to transplant some of the plants into bigger pots, because they were really starting to get big. Than we started some more seedlings, because you can never have to many.
The season of giving was coming upon us so the whole class decided to help out a bit. We talked to Corvallis Parks and Recreation and we asked if we could come and help cut down Christmas trees. These Christmas trees were going to go to families that could not afford to buy Christmas trees and we thought that this would be the perfect opportunity to get in the Christmas spirit. Also, we were cutting down the trees because the park department was cleaning up the park and they needed to get rid some of the firs. For every tree we took out, a native tree would be planted in its place. We then took the Christmas trees to Vina Moses where we got to see a few families pick out a tree. They looked so happy.
The
green house had already been cleaned up by students in the class first
quarter, but over the quarter we’ve planted, and made quite a mess so we
needed to clean the greenhouse again.
After
we cleaned up and got a little more organized we had to go on to the next step,
which was to build a fence around the garden we decided to develop so we produce
more food for Linn Benton Food Share. To keep out the cars, deer, and people.
As I mentioned earlier, we wanted to build a fence, but we needed help, so we called on the expertise of the Master Gardeners. They came and helped us start to build the fence. They also taught us how to do other things too. For example, they taught us how you have to measure more than once to be certain that you’ve got the right measurement. We learned our lesson on that one a few times, when we had to redo a project we measured incorrectly. One master gardener stayed with us the whole time, she helped us so much and also taught us a lot. We are so thankful for Pam for staying and helping out so much.