Need to Claim and Tame Your Schoolyard Garden?

by Mary Van Dyke, August 22 2015
Gone away for a few weeks and come home to find your garden has turned into a jungle? Weeds are thigh-high, the herbs and flowers in pots have shriveled, and the tomatoes and pumpkins are rampant. This is the scenario when I return to my home garden after a summer vacation, and it can play out in your schoolyard garden too.

So how to "claim and tame" your schoolyard garden after the summer?

• Do you already have parent volunteers set up a family summer-watering and weeding schedule?
• Can you outreach to volunteers such as Master Gardeners and Master Naturalists to help “adopt a plot”?
• Have you set up a community garden in your schoolyard?

This year at Jamestown Elementary School, we do not have family community buy-in to water or weed during the summer months. The schoolyard maintenance crew continues to visit every two weeks to mow and trim the grassy areas. The custodians in their spare time, water and harvest the vegetables: including beans, pumpkins, kale and lettuce. In late August, the PTA will hire a contractor to trim and mulch the week before school begins. The rest of the gardens will need to be reclaimed and tamed again when school begins in September.  I am planning a couple of community schoolyard maintenance sessions with Master Naturalists and the PTA for early October and in the spring. Maybe a Master Naturalist will take on to maintain a native plant meadow? These Saturday sessions will help engage some families to help on other garden learning projects too, and be part of our strategy this year to involve more staff and students in learning outdoors.

I “claim and tame” my home garden after summer vacation by: 

1. Weeding: i.e. remove the fastest growing, most dangerous, or most prolific weeds
2. Watering
3. Harvesting

In a couple of hours I remove:

Poison ivy (Toxicodendron radicans) seedling

• A dozen poison ivy seedlings
• A dozen mulberry seedlings
• A dozen wild grape vine seedlings
• Several kinds of weeds, prioritizing those in the garden with lots of seeds: including lambs quarters (you can eat this one), pigweed, kochia, sow thistle, horseweed, white heath aster and crabgrass.
• Less disruptive weeds I leave for next time!

Mulberry seedling

Wild grape seedling

While in the garden, I take time to enjoy the outdoors and sunshine, and I pick green and red tomatoes to ripen indoors on a window cill.  


 I water the pots of strawberries, herbs and basil, and harvest potatoes and gourds.


Then I pick a bunch of beautiful native flowers for the table. 


While working I listen to the birds, see a tiger swallowtail butterfly, and get stung by a wasp!
But now I know where wasps are nesting. I cook the potatoes with basil for supper.


Next week I’ll start to reclaim and tame the schoolyard. 

• What will be the main "weeds" this year?
• What will be in flower?
• What vegetables, fruit and herbs will be ready to harvest?
• What animals and birds will be there?
• Who will be interested to learn in the schoolyard?

Reference:
Weed Identification for Schools by Mary Van Dyke

Next blog:
A Guide to Nature Through the Seasons