Planting Day

Even though the forecast was rainy, Saturday, April 24th turned out to be a very productive and exciting day for our community garden.  Many dedicated volunteers turned out to help.  It's amazing what you can accomplish when everyone works together!  Here's a list of our finished projects:

• Planted all 6 raised beds with a variety of vegetables.  We built trellises and tomato cages too!
• Built a compost bin.
• Planted shrubs and perennials and mulched at the kindergarten entrance.
• Planted hostas and mulched the outdoor classroom.
• Weeded all trees in the front of the school and laid mulch in as many as possible.
• Planted hostas and myrtle around trees in front of the library.
• Planted lilies along the front of the school.
• Planted a Buckeye tree in the back of the school to replace one that had died.

A HUGE thank you goes out to all our volunteers.  I think we made a pretty good team!

Heidi, Hunter & Isabella Triplett

Eve, Mark, Marissa & Hunter Henson

Claire Whillans

Erin May

Kelly Bue & family
Lisa and Abby Vitali
Mike, Erin and Hannah Masters
John, Kelly, Camille & Lauren Olmstead
Taylor and Robert Buhrts
Carlin Morris
Mary Beth Smith & family
Sue Pfister
Cathy, Antonio, Alexandria and Amanda Ventresca
Steven Wink
Becky, Nathan & Lia Repucci
Rusty & Lauren Fumi
Jenny Anderson
Jan Davis
Amy & Ben Furash
Alex, Berit, Tayte & Toni Borstad
Eric, Anne, Trent & Ethan Sandstrom
Jeanne & Ellie Flowers
Katie & John MacEachern
Nicole Stephan

Wendy & Jack Nichols

Pam & Kevin Bergen

Michelle & Nick Persichetti

Allen Resch

The Helmer Family

Maryann Alford

Robyn, Andy, Drew, Sydney & Katie Harper

 

We also would like to thank the local businesses who donated food and beverages for our volunteers.  It was greatly appreciated!

Arlington Towing

Bruegger's Bagels

Carsonie's

Colin's Coffee

Huffman's Market

Thanks Caribou!

After testing, we discovered that the soil in our raised beds was slightly more alkaline than veggies like it to be.  Our gardening guru, Alex Borstad, suggested that we work coffee grounds into the soil to bring the pH level down a bit.  Ideally, we will be able to add a 5-gallon bucket of grounds to each bed before we plant this Saturday.  Now, I drink a fair amount of coffee, but to accumulate 30 gallons of grounds, we were going to need help!

Thankfully, the Caribou Coffee on Tremont Road at Kingsdale has come to the rescue by agreeing to collect their coffee grounds for us.  We're picking the grounds up daily and should have enough for our beds by Wednesday or Thursday.  So, next time you're looking to enjoy a coffee or tea, please think of Caribou.  Remember to thank their friendly staff for helping to make our garden a great success!

In the News

The Tremont Community Garden was featured in an article in the Upper Arlington News on Thursday, April 8.  Hope you enjoy it!

Building Day

The Day Begins

We had a great day today! Our fantastic crew of volunteers arrived at 9:00 a.m., ready to work!  I'll let the pictures tell the story.

Everyone worked so well together that we managed to construct and fill 4 beds by noon.  Everything looked so good that we thought....hmmm, maybe we should make 2 more!  There's plenty of space!

So, that's what we did!

Tremendous thanks are due to everyone who helped out today.  We couldn't have done it without you!

Julianne Alford

Jenny, Charlie & Henry Anderson

Pam & Kevin Bergen

Alex, Berit, Toni & Tayte Borstad

Mike Cahill

Carolyn Casper

Rusty & Lauren Fumi

Andy, Robyn, Drew, Sydney & Katie Harper

Michelle & Nick Persichetti

Catherine, Josh & Andrew Shapiro

Bonnie, Keith, Abby & Grace Wild

An extra special thanks goes to Jim Fronk for planning the layout and bed construction, ordering all of our materials and, in general, keeping us on track.

Welcome to the Tremont Community Garden!

The Tremont Community Garden is a new project at Tremont Elementary School in Upper Arlington, Ohio that will bring together students, teachers, parents and other members of the community to create a learning laboratory for the kids and also provide fresh produce to the Mid-Ohio Food Bank. We've created this blog, Growing Together, so that everyone can follow the garden's progress from planting through harvest. We hope you stop by often!

Our work begins tomorrow, April 10, at 9:00 a.m. We'll be building four raised beds on the north side of the school and filling the beds with soil.

On April 24th, we'll be planting the beds. Our crops will include herbs, squash, peas, lettuce, beans, eggplant, cucumbers, tomatoes and many other vegetables. In addition to planting the vegetable garden, we'll be tackling a number of other landscape beautification projects around the school. We need lots of volunteers, so if you'd like to join us, please send me an email at tremontgrowingtogether@gmail.com.

We are so excited about this project because it offers endless possibilities for the kids. We're working with the teachers in all grades to incorporate the garden into the curriculum in the areas of science, math, nutrition and art, just to name a few. In addition to traditional subjects, we believe that garden will provide valuable lessons in working together as a community and service to others.

We can't wait to see where this adventure leads us!