Garden Plant List for 2023

I'm trying SOOO hard not to be too ambitious in my garden planning!

So instead of immediately buying a bunch of plants, and starting a ton of seeds, let's begin with an inventory of the existing edible plants in my yard.

FOOD in My Garden / Yard:

Asparagus - came back from last year

Broccoli
started from seed Jan 9

Hazelnut (tree)

Lemon balm - came back from last year

Marshmallow - came back from last year

Mints - chocolate, lemon, sweet berry cream
delivered Apr 13

Mulberry (bush)

Pecan (tree)

Persimmon (tree)

Sage - came back from last year

Strawberries - came back from last year

Sunchokes - came back from last year

Tomatoes - white, black, red
delivered Apr 13, planted Apr 16

Baby Trees and Shrubs:

We also just received a large donation of native trees and bushes, some of which are food-bearing!

Elderberry (bush)

Plum (tree)

Sumac (bush)

The Sioux Chef's Indigenous Kitchen
by Sean Sherman
"Sumac Lemonade," p.163

Things I Want to Plant:

Borage (edible flowers)
delivered Apr 27

Dill
delivered Apr 27

Fennel

Onions

Parsley

Potatoes
planted Apr 26

Pumpkins

Radishes

Rutabaga

Sunflowers

Notes on Companion Plants:

Carrots Love Tomatoes: Secrets of Companion Planting for Successful Gardening
by Louise Riotte

Section One

Tomatoes dislike potatoes and fennel, so those plants need to go in section 1 of the garden.

Fennel will go where it went last year in section 1, and hopefully it will reseed this time.

Broccoli grows well with onions and potatoes but should be kept away from tomatoes and strawberries. It also needs to go in section 1.

Rutabaga grows well by onions. I can put the broccoli and rutabaga down the lefthand side of section 1, with the onions in between. Sage is also protective to brassicas, so I will leave it in section 1.

Section Two

Tomatoes are compatible with parsley. "Parsley planted with asparagus gives added vigor to both," says Louise Riotte. So I will put the parsley in section 2, between the asparagus and the tomatoes!

I also want to plant paper money plant (also called honesty or lunaria... and the only plant on this list that is not edible) along the shed wall. It will like the partial shade.

And I'm going to move the marshmallow into the low wet part of the pollinator garden, where it'll be happier (our most marshy spot) and put rhubarb in that corner of section 2 instead. The rhubarb will be planted in the fall.

Containers

Radishes will go in a large pot, so they are easier to find and harvest. They should be sowed with squash "to repel the striped cucumber beetle" so I can put them beside the pumpkin plant, which I will put in the center aisle of section 1 where it has lots of room to spread. For the past two years, we've tried to have our pumpkins on the Mulch Mountain (where they would also have room to spread), but it has been too easy for animals to nibble them there. The only pumpkin we ever successfully grew was in the fenced garden!
Note: Lamb's ear aids pumpkin, so planting it in section 1 will work perfectly!

The three mints need to be in pots as well, to prevent them from spreading. I like the idea of a Sensory Garden for the children, and pots would be easiest to arrange in a nice design. I can dig up the lemon balm and pot it.

Note: Louise Riotte also says that mints are strengthened in the vicinity of stinging nettles, so the best place for a Sensory Garden would be the righthand side of the old Rose Garden, which we were going to make a Peace Garden. This could be a lovely place for children to go when they need to calm down, and they can pick the mint leaves and crush and smell them.

Pollinator Garden

Let's try dill again there!

Borage and sunflowers are pollinator plants too.

Pallet Compost Bins

Sunchokes spread so they get one of the pallet compost bins (which the girls helped me build back in 2015). We do not use all three of them, so one can be compost and the other two can be for planting.

Potatoes are easier to dig out of straw so they get the other pallet compost bin, filled with straw.

Thank you, Natalie and Leah, for your hard work!

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Week of May 10

Some quick notes & links about our Outdoor Classroom activities this week!

This week we wrapped up our Cultural main lesson blocks:
Jataka Tales
Ancient Mythology: Egypt

In the individual Morning Math time, students are doing a wide variety of work, including dynamic addition / subtraction / multiplication / division, word problems, operations with fractions, algebra, operations with positive and negative numbers, and coordinate graphing. We've established that the rhythm works best if both groups have their Main Lesson Blocks first thing in the morning. Working in MLBs is followed by Math and then Plant Adoption.

Lots of plant experiments have been set up by the Early Childhood group and they are helping with larger planting projects as well. They also love to listen in on the Cultural lessons that the older kids are having.

Next week we will dive into Botany, beginning with a review of the Timeline of Life and, of course, the Tree of Life and scientific names! I am excited to do Structured Word Inquiry on some of the fascinating Botany nomenclature. There's so much terminology to cover! And so many fun experiments to do!

Monday, May 10

• Early Childhood: check on plant experiments, enjoy lots of outdoor free play (current favorite theme: fort building)
• Planting Projects: check on seedlings, learn about the terms "leggy" and "hardening off," move some of our baby plants to dappled sunshine for part of the day, final planting of the tomato plants (we have a dozen!), mulch the stinging nettles, pot up lots of deliciously fragrant herbs and make a path of pots which students can sniff on their way to and from the canteen tent (spearmint, apple mint, pineapple mint, lime mint, orange mint, sweet pear mint, ginger mint, chocolate mint, strawberry mint, lavender, and rosemary)
• Language Arts: review 1st person / 2nd person / 3rd person persepective and read An Undone Fairy Tale by Ian Lendler
• Lower Elementary: student presentation of "The Golden Goose" from Buddha Stories by Demi, discuss the first-ever printed book (which was a Buddhist sutra, and was printed using a carved wood block with gold ink on indigo rice paper; this inspired the artwork in Demi's book), create artwork of a golden goose feather using gold colored pencil and gold watercolor paint on "Nightshift" indigo cardstock
• Upper Elementary: add Thoth to MLB, discuss the Rosetta Stone and how it is that we can read hieroglyphs (and have therefore learned so much about Ancient Egypt), read "Seshat - Goddess of Scribes, Building, and Astronomy" and "Bes and Taweret - God and Goddess of Home, Childbirth, Women, and Children"

Tuesday, May 11

• Early Childhood: check on plant experiments, make plans for new planting experiments (date seed, lemon seed, whole wild strawberry), eat wild strawberries, help with gardening projects, play tag

  thank you to Zac for sharing a picture of the Rosetta Stone which he found in his Childcraft book (The Magic of Words, 1975, p.163)

• Planting Projects: continue to check on seed germination and harden off seedlings, start watermelon and rutabaga seeds, lots of planting today! (cabbage, lemon balm, oregano, sage, zucchini, basil, wormwood), update Plant Adoption Forms and set goals for tomorrow
• LE: hear student presentation of "The Magic Pig" from Buddha Stories and add to MLB
• UE: further exploration of Seshat - Goddess of Scribes, Building, and Astronomy

  1. have students work together to complete Discover the Pythagorean Theorem! (FREE on TpT)

  2. review right angles; demonstrate Pythagorean Theorem with 3, 4, 5 bead bars from the Colored Bead Bar Material and 3, 4, 5 squares from the Short Bead Chain Material

  3. explain Pythagorean Triples; give students the remaining squares from the Short Bead Chain Material (1, 2, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10) and challenge them to find another Pythagorean Triple from among these pieces (6, 8, 10)

  4. read chapter 5, "The Rope-Stretchers," of String, Straightedge, and Shadow: The Story of Geometry by Julia Diggins

  use pompom yarn to stand in for the Ancient Egyptian knotted string

  stop at the bottom of page 40 to make the construction shown by using the pompom yarn and four students, each representing a stake

  stop at the bottom of page 43 to demonstrate my handy-dandy Ancient Egyptian Level, which I built with two students back in 2016

  5. assign Pythagorean Theorem Worksheet (FREE on TpT) for follow-up practice during the week (all Pythagorean Triples... no decimals)

Wed, May 12

Because of so much missed school last week we didn't have an unscheduled Wednesday today. My plan book just couldn't allow it! But I promised the class that we would honor that tradition for the remaining weeks of May and June.
• EC: hide plastic animals in the fort under the burning bush and see if friends can find them, play with kinetic sand, swing in the hammock and "fish" using a long stick and a long string and a paperclip hook, practice tying knots, run fingers through yellow pollen on the tabletop and run around yelling "I'm going to pollinate something!"
• Gardening Projects: consider sprouts as an easy-to-plant / quick-to-harvest option, gather up all of the loose cardboard pieces left over from Boxville and place it in a huge pile and jump on it vigorously to flatten it (a very joyful job), use the flattened cardboard to make the last few paths in the garden, find an acorn in the mulch pile with a baby oak tree sprouting from it and carefully plant it in a large pot, discover a little black & orange beetle larva and watch it intently

  the highlight of today was when Zac came running over with the announcement that the baby pecan tree had leaves on it!

  we were amazed to discover that our pecan tree was still alive!!!!! (this was a huge deal to the children because it was partially buried by the Mulch Mountain and had been showing no signs of life and so we were certain that it was dead)

  the whole school came to help! we worked hard to rake away the extra mulch from around the pecan tree, carefully removed the crushed wire cage from around the pecan tree so that it could grow more easily, and put a new larger wire cage around the pecan tree so that everyone would know it was there and would keep it safe

• LE: student presentation of The Brave Little Parrot by Rafe Martin, add to MLB
• UE: transfer honey to another container and wash honey jars thoroughly with hot water, recall and add Seshat to MLB, hear last two legends ("Sobek - God of Crocodiles and the Waters" and "Khnum - God of Potters and the Flood"), recall irrigation ditches and explain how to build a shaduf (we will make ours next week on a hot day)

Thu, May 13

• Gardening Projects: thank you to the student who followed up on our acorn/oak tree discoveries yesterday by bringing in a little sprouting sugar maple seedling still encased by its papery "helicopter"

  plant sugar maple seedling in a large pot

  plant all of the pollinator and native prairie and dye garden plants in their garden bed -- we have black-eyed Susan, Joe Pye weed, tall boneset, prairie sage, valerian, purple coneflower, calendula, coreopsis, and woad -- and note that the milkweed from last year is coming back strong (and hopefully will attract monarchs again)

  students are doing an excellent job of remembering to water their seeds and hardening off their seedlings... today we talked about thinning your seedlings if too many have germinated in the peat pot

• SWI: even though we haven't done any lessons on SWI this week, I can tell that our conversations are making a difference overall, as students wander up to me every day or so with questions / comments

  "I think that the < br > in < brother > is a prefix for < other >"

  "is the < cele > in < celebrate > a prefix?"

  the student who adopted the Medicinal Herb garden becomes fascinated by reading the ingredient lists on all of the herbal remedies in the First Aid Kit to see if he recognizes the names of any of the herbs and we wonder, is there a relationship between < comfrey > and < comfort >?

• Nature: discover that a mother cardinal is nesting in the burning bush! we are watching carefully but can't tell if she is about to lay eggs or is already sitting on eggs

  I worry that she may have laid her eggs while we were still using the Canteen Tent for all of our meetings, and that now that we are using the driveway extensively, we may scare her away

• Handwork: students are still slowly working on their knitting projects (star gnome, pig)... this seems to work well as a relaxing end of the day activity while people are cooling off from running all around
• EC: enjoy lots of outdoor free play (current favorite theme: playing mama and baby birds), play tag, snuggle with Archie
• LE: student presentation of The Magic Plum Tree by Freya Littledale, add to MLB
• UE: check on apple mummies and throw them away (this project was a new project this year and it did NOT work out), recall and add Sobek to MLB (it is great fun to trace your hands as the illustration for this story), read Muti's Necklace: The Oldest Story in the World

  do initial steps on canopic jars (this was another new project this year and it is working out really well!), mix up flour/water/glue and tear newspaper strips, cover outside of glass honey jars -- leaving a window where the glass is clear and the organ inside the jar can show through -- with paper mache, draw the organ which would have been put in your jar and use mod podge to adhere it to the inside of the jar so that it shows through the clear glass, use the extra mod podge and some illustrations from vintage books whose bindings had fallen apart to decoupage new pictures onto our Art Room card table

Fri, May 14

• EC: sensory play with water beads in the mud kitchen, continue enthusiastically playing Baby Bird, hang upside down in the hammock to see the world a new way: "Mom, you're walking on the sky!"
• Gardening Projects: look at the results of many of our experiments and decide which ones to keep, which ones to discard, and which ones to try again (yes, some the seeds which soaked in "ocean water" for two weeks did still sprout!)
• Botany: taste 9 different kinds of microgreens from LEAF and introduce the terms "monocot" and "dicot" (examine popcorn microgreens and you can clearly see this is a monocot when comparing it to our other microgreens... basil, beet, broccoli, cabbage, nasturtium, pea, radish, sunflower)
• LE: finish MLBs (number pages, write table of contents, decorate front & back covers)
• UE: finish MLBs, wrap Nefertrouti II in strips of clean white fabric (nine pounds of salt were needed to completely dry out the dressed rainbow trout), make scroll for her with "May your heart be lighter than a feather" written in hieroglyphs (old rolls of fax machine paper are perfect for this), entomb her in the cardboard pyramid along with our other two mummies, explain Akhenaton and Nefertiti's attempt to start a religous revolution (monotheism!) in Ancient Egypt and read Tutankhamen's Gift by Robert Sabuda, look at Ancient Egyptian Costumes Paper Dolls, look at pictures in What Life Was Like on the Banks of the Nile: Egypt 3050 - 30 BC, give students a fun little gift (as it turns out, one of the "scrap" pieces of laser cut wood donated by Don Morris looks almost exactly like the Mask of Tutankhamen)!

  continue to work on the canopic jars: mix up a custom paint color to match our clay canopic jar lids (Unbleached Titanium with a touch of Graphite) and paint over the paper mache from yesterday (we actually did get good coverage on the clear glass as well, for places like the rim of the jar where we forgot to put paper mache, but I like the paper mache step because it makes the jars look more like they are truly made of clay instead of obviously being glass honey jars)

LE / UE: play Mad Libs at the end of the day

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A Marvelous Monarch Monday Morning!

THIS morning was so special!

The weather has gotten much cooler, so our monarchs have stayed in their chrysalises longer. We had learned from one of our monarch books that, "a monarch butterfly develops within its chrysalis over a span of five to fifteen days, depending on the temperature" (An Extraordinary Life: The Story of Monarch Butterfly by Laurence Pringle, p.17). And it's very true.

Pringle's book has been our bedtime read aloud for days. It's amazing! It is by far the best chapter book for learning about monarchs; the best picture book, in my opinion, is Monarch and Milkweed by Helen Frost.



Therefore, because it was so cold this morning, two butterflies didn't emerge first thing. They emerged while we were awake. And the second one, which came out at about 10:30 am, we WATCHED emerge from its chrysalis.

We also were able, several weeks ago, to watch two caterpillars go into their chrysalises. So I'll do a companion post to this one, with the videos. I took them on my iPhone, so they're not professionally done. But it's so amazing, and I wanted to be able to share it with all of my students, since they can't be here for in-person for this Nature Study. Our big Botany project for this school year is to plant and plant a Native Tallgrass Prairie Demonstration Garden, so hopefully we will have tons of milkweed and tons of monarchs each and every year.

Here are some of my favorite photos from the many hundreds that I have taken this August & September. Click on any photo to enlarge it and scroll.

Aug 18

our milkweed is in full bloom!

discovering monarch caterpillars on it for the first time

Aug 30

setting up the terrarium in the Art Room

with floral tubes for milkweed cuttings

and some butterfly books, of course

Sep 2

our first chrysalis!

Sep 3

making beeswax crayon drawings

this is Zac's "monarch caterpillar on milkweed"

the terrarium is packed full of caterpillars and food

it's hard to count them all (we think there's 17)

we quickly learn that each time we bring in more milkweed, 

we bring in more caterpillars too

the terrarium was last used for a toad, so it was muddy

I was afraid to clean it with a harsh chemical, right before putting

in tender insects, so I just used vinegar and water

next time I will scrub it thoroughly well in advance,

so that we can see everything through clearer glass

Sep 4

9:30 the next morning...

all the stems are nearly bare of leaves

seriously,

they eat A LOT

our little Outdoor Classroom display

sipping sweetness through a straw,

just like a butterfly!

Sep 5

in the morning we find two caterpillars in J's

which they do right before they go into their chrysalis

I took a video of this guy, Left J, going into his chrysalis, and forgot

about still photos, but I took some still photos of the other one, Right J

here's Left J as a brand-new chrysalis

they are still a bit lumpy at first, and it looks a lot like

a kid in a sleeping bag as they move around for a while

there was a lot of frass on the paper towels today, but I waited

to change the bedding, since I didn't want to disturb the J's

it's pretty easy, actually, to just lift out the rack holder with all

the tubes, set it on the table, and put in fresh paper towels

I'm happy with our setup!

we also realized that chrysalises have to have hardened

for a day or two before they get their gold line and gold dots

it's a beautiful shade of green; photos don't do it justice

the other caterpillars casually walk all over them

in fact, one attached to a stem which then got nibbled,

and the chrysalis fell!  Zac is the one who spotted it

we left it alone and waited to see if it was unhurt

I went around to the other side of the aquarium to get a better view

of Right J, which is why it looks like he turned around

when the antennae start to look like they're disintegrating

like that, it means they are about to shed that skin

under the skin is the green sac of the chrysalis

this green sac with the black wrinkly thing hanging from it is 

Right J

he sheds his skin and the green sac is what is under it

so that the green sac doesn't fall off its twig when the 

old skin is completely discarded, the caterpillar attaches in a special way

(An Extraordinary Life, pages 16-17)

and the caterpillars just keep right on doing their thing

Sep 6

our terrarium is full of beautiful chrysalises 

Sep 11

most caterpillars attach to the milkweed stems, 

but these guys went right up to the rim at the underside of the tank

we also had three attach to the wooden lid itself

they look for a high and secure spot

we wake up in the morning to our first butterflies!

once they've strengthened their wings and warmed up

they will want to fly away

we had three in all this morning

the first butterfly flew away through the open garage door, but we thought we could make it a bit easier for other two, so I carried the rack outside

we have put some cats back onto our milkweed plant outside

I had to keep every stem that had a chrysalis on it, so the habitat

became full of tubes with dry stalks, and it became harder

and harder to have enough tubes where I could replace the milkweed

but the very last one was so fat and would go into a chrysalis

soon, so Zac wanted us to keep him in the terrarium

the last caterpillar

(which I had to keep watching so he didn't crawl away)

sketching

Zac's "monarch butterfly"

the fallen chrysalis is still undisturbed

they climb to the very tippety top of their step

and practice opening and closing their wings

before letting go and flying away

it takes several hours from when they emerge

this is a male

note the two large black dots on the veins

they are scent glands, 

believed to be used to lure the female into mating

the first short flight, to the burning bush by the driveway

luckily, we have a bit of honeysuckle growing in that group

of bushes, so it worked out really well

back in the terrarium again, we watch our last lonely caterpillar

crawl around and nibble on leaves

so many chrysalises!

Sep 14

we wake up to a butterfly!

we ended up with three today as well

to the left... a still-green chrysalis

in the middle... a clear chrysalis with the butterfly showing

to the right... a newly emerged monarch

I love how you can see the butterfly through

the translucent chrysalis, right before it emerges

9:16 am

and when it comes out, the wings are crumpled and wet

9:38 am

you can see how much more the wings will expand

of course, we took them outside to release them

up into the dogwood tree

now that we could see how much the wings will unfurl,

we began to worry about the chrysalis inside the rack

if the butterfly was okay, and it came out, it would be

trapped in a plastic cage

so I carefully moved it to the paper towel

golly day, they are so beautiful

Sep 15

we wake up to three butterflies!

and the one that fell is okay!!!

we release them, of course

I actually had to put a stick by the butterfly that was

clinging to the rack, since the plastic tube was slippery, and

they have an instinct to climb up as high as possible before

flying for the first time

I put another stem of milkweed by him and he grabbed it with

his legs and pulled up onto it and he was off!

so... 

nine safely emerged & three still in chrysalises up on the lid

Sep 21

we wake up this morning to a very dark chrysalis

8:58 am

10:21 am

walked into the art room and there was a butterfly!

and then I realize that he won't be able to fly away

unless we take the entire wooden lid outside

we figure out a way to balance it carefully

between a large cardboard box and Zac's easel

another chrysalis is looking very dark

it will surely emerge any minute

so I set Zac up with a chair and a snack

and we wait

we watch the first one out uncurl his tongue

he's opening and closing his mouth over and over

and then we saw the second one EMERGING

so excited!!!!!!

welcome to the world, little one!

see how it looks like there are two tongues?

the proboscis actually forms as two halves, so the butterfly has

to uncoil and recoil the two halves

Pringle says, "They had developed separately and had to be

uncoiled and pressed together to lock into a single workable tube."

(page 20)

so, now we have here two newly-emerged butterflies

and I realize that they don't have a very secure perch,

clinging to that chrysalis

I go back and look through our photos, and noting that when they

always came out before we woke up, we found them clinging

to stems of the milkweed, and not to their chrysalises

so I went and cut some milkweed and put it in a tube,

and set it where they could easily reach it with their legs

we have loved this butterfly experience

and we have learned a ton about monarchs!

I will organize and share the videos next

This post contains affiliate links to materials I truly use for homeschooling. Qualifying purchases provide me with revenue. Thank you for your support!