Hmmm! P-O-T-A-T-O!

That is exactly what my peer (On the left) was think when Mr.Matus's
FIT class made some delicious potato salad with potatoes picked fresh from the Forest Trail garden. The potato salad had a base, of course, potatoes with a mustard and mayonnaise sauce sprinkled with some dill and other exotic spices. And the end result is a very delicious snack for everyone!!!!!

Dill and Thyme

We used dill and thyme to "flavor" the potato salad:
here's the inside story of how we got it

The dill was easy to pick off because half of it was already off and in the compost. That is only relevant  because that is where we got it from. The dill smelled really strong, it was overpowering! You can barely taste the dill in the potato salad. We figured it was OK that it was in the compost because there was not a lot of it. :)

Potata Mixin'

Us mixing in the spices

 Yum! We pulled up some potatoes from our FTE garden to make potato salad. It was really good in this picture we are mixing the spices. We added salt, pepper, garlic salt, and celery salt. We also added dill and thyme that was grown in the garden. We were able to make a lot of the potato salad, and it was really fun to make something then eat it. So you have the satisfaction of eating your work.

Stiring the potato salad!!

Now the ingredients are in the bowl, so now we're going to blog about stirring the potatoes and the other ingredients. After the first group threw in the ingredients the second group stirred it! It took longer then you would think because you had to make sure everything was perfectly stirred and not in a clump. Then the next group served the potatoes after we equally placed 14 potatoes on each plate. And viola, it's done!

Potato Serving

Our plates of potato's

Continuing about the potato salad, this is how we served it. After the mixing we took the spoon, we mixed it with and and put a spoonful of potato salad on each plate. It was a messy business because it fell on the floor and sometimes didn't land on the plates. While I served, the other girls in my group evened out the plates so everyone got an equal amount. It was really fun, and I'll assume the potato salad was good I didn't try it, but the people who did loved it.

Awesome Potato Salad

In Mr. Matus' fit class, we picked potatoes. Then we did all the stuff like mayonnaise and spices. After that we passed it out and ate it. It was amazing, and it was because it was all fresh from our garden. It was a great time to have a break. We all got to stop what we were doing and eat delicious home-made potato salad. That's all we have for now! See you next time!

Potato Salad!

Last week we used the potatoes we harvested to make potato salad. We used Dill and Sage from the garden, and mayonnaise and mustard. After we mixed it all up, they were passed out. Everybody who tried some liked it! We also had many extras for everybody. It was very yummy potato salad considering it was made in a classroom by a group of 5th graders.

Oversized Zucchini

The Zucchini

Did you hear the BIG news? There is some gigantic zucchini that was planted in the garden by Mr. Lofgren's 4th grade class! And it has grown to a Tremendous size! Just look at it! I bet it will be twice its size by tomorrow. By the time we harvest it there will be enough for everyone in FTE!  2 of the 4 zucchinis were 5 inches! And the 5-inch zucchini has just started growing! Go out into the garden and check it out for yourself!!

Shade for the plants

Recently, the Forest Trail garden made a shade cover that goes over the plants to keep them cool without them being deprived of their sunlight. If a fruit gets to hot, then the skin gets hard and you can't eat it. So the shade cover is essential to the garden. The shade cover is like the winter cover because it shields the plants from the climate. You don't need one if you live in a warm climate, though. So as you can see, the garden food would be terrible without a shade cover.

The Potato Patato

On May 14, Mr. Matus's FIT class harvested potatoes. The biggest one was about 3 in tall and 2 in wide! In total we harvested about 50! We harvested all of them by having half the class pulling up one plant then the other half of the class digging up some from the dirt. YUCK!!!! We had to dig much deeper than where we pulled them up to find the other potatoes that fell off.

Hilling Up

The fifth graders at Forest Trail have planted potato's. After about one and a half weeks we had to hill up. Hilling up is when you pile up a bunch of dirt so that the potato's can grow big. It helps it grow big by supporting it as it grows. We hill up about six inches the first time then the second time you can hill up almost six more inches. After hilling up, we had a lot of large potato's, which we pulled out of the ground.

Da Artichoke

Before, the artichoke might not have looked like much but now it has become as pretty as a peach. After the flower bloomed artichoke turn into a very beautiful vegetable. Now everyone is so happy that the artichoke has bloomed into some real high class food so if you are ever in the neighborhood come on by our garden and take a look at the our beautiful artichoke.

Shell Imprints and Fossils

In the garden today we made imprints in modeling clay with shells when we were learning about fossils.they were supposed to look like fossils that you could find. There was a big fossil called ammonite. Some of the fossils were big and some small, but all were very old -duh- they were ONLY 100,000,000 years old that's not much at all for a fossil. Some might have been fossils for 998,998,998 years old (or something like that).

Digging for some POTATOES!

Potatoes and plants going to the decomposing bin.

POTATOES!!!! Today we are digging for potatoes, we got lots of them. Some of the kids got giant 5 inch potatoes. But they were baby potatoes. Some people got this part right at the bottom of the roots, it was all wet and gross. The teachers told us that part was the original potato. The potatoes need to be planted almost on the top of the dirt. Then after that you stack dirt up one foot on the seed and wait tell it is done growing. When the plant is done growing you pull those big, juicy, potatoes out of the ground. We also had to put the remaining part of the plant into the compost bin, there were also so pretty gross things in there. When we were done i asked the teacher if we could eat the potatoes, but she said no. >:()

Wow! We found huge potatoes in the fte garden. It
took us a while to dig them up. We had to use team
work to get up the giant potatoes below. To the
right we have some FTE students that just dug up some
potatoes. The smallest plant we had grew the most
and  largest potatoes, we found three potatoes under
it. We found about 48 potatoes total.

Our largest potato

Compsoting in the garden!

Yes we're back with some more blogging! This time about the garden! Just today (May 14th,2012) we went down to the FTE garden to harvest potatoes and we put the potatoes in a bin and composted the top part (that shows) of the potato. Today we will talk to you about composting! Composting is where you put unused plants into a bin and it will turn into rich nutrients and soil for the plants. The nutrients is in the soil. We dug through the soil looking for potatoes to make potato soup with. We then composted the leafy part and removed the potatoes. After that we brought the potatoes back into our classroom and put them in a big brown box.

Pots, Dill, and Greens

Recently we planted some dill, mint, and oregano but we didn't put them in their usual beds with all their friends.We put the herbs in the pots because they are invasive, that means that they will overgrow and take space from the other plants.

They are thieves.

 They also steal nutrients from the other plants and that is why we isolate them and in other words put them in jail. But they're not all bad they still are helpful to us as food, (and examples of other plants.)

Don't do the crime if you can't do the thyme

(Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! Get it?)

Butterfly Garden

Our garden now has some caterpillars! They are hanging out on the Purple Passion Plant. Some have even started going into a chrysalis (in the picture on the left, I know it's small.)! They have been eating our fruit and veggies that we have been growing. And good luck caterpillars because I hear the birds are hungry this time of year. I can't wait until I see some orange butterflies.

The Amazing Trail!

A group of boy scouts decided to make a beautiful trail here at Forest Trail and it is near our very own FTE garden. The troop leader, Micheal Kerbow was in charge of everything. The new trail was made two weekends ago. The trail is outlined with all different sorts of pretty rocks and ends near Mrs.Couvillion's 3rd grade cabin. Along the trail we spotted several interesting plants, flowers and insects. There is even this interesting butterfly that was black and red. The new trail is cool and something that FTE will treasure forever!!!!

Big, Juicy, Caterpillars

Here is a picture of the Caterpillars

When Mr. Matus's class went to the garden, we saw some big, juicy, caterpillars. They were so big that they could just explode right there in front of us. They were so juicy, we could just shove them down our mouths and chew and chew them. They looked really cool with their black, yellow, green, and white striped bodies. They were so awesome that we took a picture for all of you guys to see. When they get bigger they will turn into small butterfly's or small moth's. We also saw a couple cocoons on the top of gate.

Kindercorn

Did you hear the news, Kindergarten planted corn.You know up on the ledge by the 5th grade class room it's really cool. I just love corn it's my favorite vegetable! It was planted Friday and it is really growing.You can all ready see green, I know your probably thinking why green? I thought corn was yellow well corn actually grows on a green stalk and the top of the plant which you rip of is also green. Next time you are in the garden check it out!

Marquee is Completed

Final Marquee

The marquee (right) is a success! Thanks to Danny's hard work, Forest Trail Elementary has an epic garden, AND a beautiful marquee! We should all thank Danny for all his hard and tiring work! He gave us his own time to build this beautiful marquee! Thank you very much, Danny!!!!!!!! The marquee has two whiteboards, two holders, both with Minnesota license plates on them, two paper holders for Kindergarden, 1st grade, and 2nd grade, and the second bin for papers for 3rd grade, 4th grade, and 5th grade! Danny is now looking for Texas license plates instead of the Minnesota ones.

The Artichoke of Life

This Artichoke may not look like much, but this Artichoke is a miracle. The students planted it last year and then everybody thought it was dead. BUUUUUUUUUT!!!!!!!!!!!! Miraculously the now school famous Artichoke some how managed to "come back to life" through hard work and lots of water. The Artichoke is now praised by everyone who goes in the garden. We hope you have enjoyed learning about this famous Artichoke and can't wait to eat it!!

The New Grown Flowers

Bluebonnet

Poppies

Bluebonnets and Poppies are growing outside our school garden and they are beautiful! The state flower the Bluebonnet is a wonderful flower and the Poppies are also cool. The Poppies are growing outside the garden in a small field and the Bluebonnets are on hills everywhere around school along with other wild flowers. The flowers are also growing all along the Texas highways with families and people taking pictures of themselves in the Bluebonnets.

Honeysuckles Rock!

Yum those honeysuckles are delicious. Here at the FTE garden among the many plants that we grow we have those delicious honey filled, mouth watering honeysuckles! The honeysuckles are bright pink with yellow pistols on them and a green bud on the bottom. While working hard on our garden it's nice to grab a honeysuckle and slurp on the honey from the inside. The honeysuckles are located on the wall of the garden next to the sage it makes a delicious treat for the animals especially the hummingbirds. This is FTE garden signing out.

Potatoes Like a Boss

 Potatoes! We planted potatoes last week. They are already two inches tall. When we planted them, we had to plant them eye side up. Do you know what the eye of a potato is? It is the starting stem of a potato. If you don't, then your plant will grow sideways or something........you don't want that to happen. Anyway the plants are doing well. Soon there will be more potatoes.

Watering Bottles

After planting our many different vegetables, 5th grade had to water them. But instead of having to carry around heavy watering cans, we decided to use water bottles. Sounds weird, huh? Well, we poked holes around the top of them so that we could give the plants something to drink without wasting the everything in the bottle.

We could water many plants at a time with causing erosion and we also got a chance to recycle plastic bottles!