To get involved with GROW, contact Judy Ingram, check the Volunteer Job Board, or the Murch GreenScene Planning Site. We also have volunteer grade/room liaisons for each class whose job it is to help the teachers and students directly; contact
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Winter in the Garden
As the days become shorter and the air colder, the frenzy in the Murch vegetable garden winds down. The corn stalks and chard were removed. Soon the broccoli and tomato plants will follow.
Our work in the fall is to prepare the garden for spring. The most important part of that job is to take care of the soil to make sure it is healthy. Healthy soil will provide next year's crop with all of the nutrients necessary for growth. So when our second- and fifth-grade volunteers pulled out the corn stalks out of the Three Sisters Garden, they cut the bean vines at ground level to leave the roots in the soil. This is because members of the legume family, like beans, fix nitrogen in the soil. Nitrogen is part of chlorophyll and helps plants to grow green and lush. This makes it possible for plants to turn energy from the sun into plant energy.
The fifth grade volunteers also planted red clover, which is another legume. This is called a "cover crop" or "green manure." The roots of the red clover in the Three Sisters Garden will add more nitrogen to the soil to replace the nitrogen used by this year's corn. Corn is a heavy feeder, so we have to add nutrients to the soil where it grew before we can grow new plants in the same spot. The fifth graders used a soil test kit to determine the levels of key nutrients before the cover crop was planted. We will test the soil again in the spring to see if our red clover made a difference.
We will also improve our soil by adding compost in the spring. We will make the compost throughout the fall and winter. The fourth grade will use worm bins to make compost. The kindergarteners helped the second and fifth graders feed our Roly-pig with the corn stalk leftovers. The fifth grade is making compost in our Roly Pig composter by feeding the pig food and garden scraps, which nature will break down in the pig's belly to produce a rich soil-like compost to feed our garden. We need everyone to help with this project by protecting our pig. Please do not touch the pig if you are not in fifth grade. It is important not to climb on it, or roll it, or put anything inside the pig unless a teacher or GROW volunteer has told you it is OK. Our pig has a special diet, and the wrong ingredients could ruin our project. -- Lisa Burke
Earth-Friendly Bug Patrol
Our vegetable garden is full of life -- and not just plant life. Throughout the year our After School Bug Patrol searched the leaves of our vegetables to find the critters that were doing damage and to identify the helpful ones, like bees and butterflies. Among the bad bugs we saw this summer were cabbage loopers (very cool, bright green caterpillars) and slugs. We carefully removed the loopers and bad slugs, but we decided to leave the giant leopard slugs alone, because they help get rid of worse slugs.
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For the coming year, we plan to guard against these pests in an organic way. First, we won't plant broccoli or similar vegetables in the bed where we found the loopers. This is called "crop rotation." We also planted garlic and onions to overwinter in the beds. They will sprout in the spring and be ready to harvest in July. In the mean time, the garlic will protect our garden with its natural herbicidal and pesticidal properties. In particular, the garlic will deter aphids and slugs. This is known as "companion planting." Let's hope it works! --Lisa Burke
It's The Great Pumpkin (Bread), Chef Gray!
The first graders closed out their unit on pumpkins in a very tasty way. Our GROW sponsors, Chef Todd Gray and his wife Ellen Kassoff of Equinox Restaurant, came to Murch on November 5 to discuss winter squash and demonstrate how to make pumpkin bread. Check out their cool video of the event! The students showed lots of excitement over butternut squash and spaghetti squash, and they called for more when they tasted the pumpkin bread with vanilla sauce. The Chef was impressed with our students' enthusiasm for squash! Visit the GreenScene recipe page and try this one at home. The Chef plans to visit Murch monthly to share seasonal foods with each grade. --Lisa Burke
Did you know?
We didn't produce any pumpkins in the Three Sisters garden this year. A midnight marauder stole all the pumpkin plants as seedlings! We had to start again from seed, but it was already too late in the season to get a crop. -- Eileen Kane
Students Put Three Sisters to Bed for Winter
Farmers have to watch the weather. We had planned to cut down the corn stalks with the fourth graders on Thursday, October 14, but a prediction of heavy rain (we had several rainy Thursdays the last few weeks) sent Asa Nugent and his mom, Eileen Kane, out into the garden under the half-moon's light on Wednesday evening before to cut them down. We have saved them for school decorations and to use the husks and leaves to make corn husk dolls with the second graders. We left the remaining bean plants on the ground.
On a lovely sunny recess on November 3, a number of second graders found Eileen in the garden and helped dig up the corn roots. A group of kindergarteners spontaneously joined us and put the roots into the roly-pig. The fifth graders finally got to do some planting that day! When they came out, several of them finished digging out the remaining corn roots and burying the remains of the beans. Beans help "to fix" nitrogen in the soil = a nutrient other plants need to grow. We finished by turning over the whole garden, raking the soil flat and scattering red clover seed. The red clover is our winter crop and can be used as tea. But in our case, we will turn it over at the right time to add a natural compost to our soil. We had to get the clover planted before the first frost - we have already come pretty close to a first frost in the city. "First frost" is when the temperature goes below 32 degrees (freezing) at night.
The fifth graders also performed soil tests and the readings:
- Soil PH: 6.0 (slightly acid)
- Nitrogen: between sufficient and surplus
- Phosphorus: surplus
- Potash: sufficient.
Whatever we did this year, the earthworms love our garden since we saw hundreds.
Speaking of first frost, we have encouraged the pre-k and k teachers to pick and serve the last of the mini-pear tomatoes. Once we hit the frost, the tomato plants will head into the roly-pig. -- Eileen Kane
Four C's (and a Todd): Chefs, Corn, Compost and...CNN
On Sunday, September 19, Murch welcomed for the third time Chef Todd Gray and Ellen Kassoff, chef-owners of the Equinox restaurant in downtown DC. Based on our second grade's recent harvest of dent corn, beans, and squash from the Three Sisters garden, Chef Gray featured sweet corn in his fall harvest cooking demonstration.
Corn Griddle Cakes were the harvest fare on this gorgeous Indian Summer afternoon in the Murch playground amphitheater. Chef Gray invited the children to "get to know corn" by shucking fresh ears. The children recycled the husks by feeding them into the great mouth of Murch's new composter, the pink Roly Pig. This year's corn husks will become fresh, nutrient-rich soil for next year's corn crop. The children then gathered around cooking stations, where Chef Gray taught them about the ingredients for the griddle cakes and helped them mix up the batter. Everyone gathered around the hot griddle while Chef poured the children's batter and cooked up fresh, hot, corn cakes. Some of the children got to flip the cakes themselves. Everyone agreed that this healthy twist on pancakes was sweet and delicious.
 Among the estimated 80 mouths watering in the crowd that afternoon were three members of a CNN film crew for two back-to-school pieces. One CNN story features Chef Gray's work with Murch to improve school nutrition and teach the benefits of organic, local produce. The other CNN piece highlights the cooking demo and the second grade's harvest of the Three Sisters Garden, and Murch's own Max and Ruthie Wix family cooking and enjoying a healthy meal together.
Chef Gray and alumna Ellen Kassoff also gave the children homework in the form of a thoughtful and historical gift to Murch. They brought a variety of heirloom seeds from Thomas Jefferson's home at Monticello. The children were instructed to take the precious seeds home and sprout them in soil and water, using glass jars as mini-greenhouses. The children are to bring the heirloom plants back to school for planting. What a great way to make history come alive in the Murch garden!
Murch sends out a great big thank you to Chef Todd and Ellen, and to all of the families who came out to make Murch's third cooking event a corn cake flipping success. -- Lisa Burke
Garden Fresh Treat for Murch Staff
The basil is on it's way out for the season, just as our tomatoes are finally ripening. Today, the GROW Committee treated the teachers and staff to a small taste of our garden goodness, a Rainbow Bruschetta. The bruschetta was made with red heirloom and yellow pear tomatoes from our vegetable garden, and purple and green basil from The Pizza Party herb planter. It was served with french bread from the Marvelous Market. Try the recipe at home, substituting your favorite varieties of tomatoes and basils.
Murch's Veggie Garden: Growing Regionally and Organically in Washington
  
In 2009, the Murch community collaborated with chef Todd Gray and Ellen Gray of Equinox Restaurant to create Project GROW (Growing Regionally and Organically in Washington), part of the Edible Gardens Initiative founded by White House Assistant Chef and Food Initiatives Coordinator Sam Kass, who challenged 15 chefs from the DC area to help improve child nutrition. Each chef adopted a school; Ellen Kassoff Gray and Todd Gray the owners of Equinox Restaurant near the White House, chose our school because Ellen graduated from Murch 40 years ago. Rather than focusing on the school lunch program, the Grays are focusing on gardening and developing a series of garden plots--with lots of help from students and volunteers--on the Murch grounds.
In keeping with the Obama Administration’s focus on healthy eating and nutritional education for America’s school children, GROW aims to give the Murch community a greater perspective on where their food comes from, how to cultivate their own crops, and--most significantly--how to cook and enjoy what they grow. In addition to creating an organic garden on the school grounds, GROW sponsors demonstrations of healthy cooking, composting, and rainwater harvesting. The committee of staff, parents, and community members meets monthly to discuss the evolution and maintenance of the garden as well as the educational connections to the classrooms. Murch teachers and administrators perpetuate the enthusiasm by weaving into the core curriculum lessons on planting, sowing, harvesting, and choosing crops for our Mid Atlantic region.
Assistant Principal Rabiah Gardens with the First Lady
On June 4, I had the exciting experience of meeting First Lady Michelle Obama and speaking about Murch Elementary on the White House Lawn. Mrs. Obama has been fighting childhood obesity since her husband took office and on this particular morning, she invited 500 chefs, including celebrity chef Rachel Ray and Top Chef star Tom Colicchio, to hear about how they can get involved in schools to teach children about healthy eating. Murch Elementary was selected as a model school for this initiative due to our overflowing garden and successful GROW collaboration with Equinox Restaurant.
With Equinox chef-owner Todd Gray, I told the First Lady and the chefs about the hard work our teachers, parents, and students have done to create an organic garden filled with beets, lettuce, peas, and carrots. I mentioned how our first graders use the garden to learn about “the three sisters” and our fourth graders have decomposition bins in their classrooms filled with wiggly worms; how our fourth and fifth graders gobbled up bowls of salad and our third graders devoured peas dipped in hummus. Delighted by these stories, the chefs were inspired to help out schools in their neighborhoods... >>Read more
Murch’s GROW Garners Post Coverage
Murch got a special mention in a story in the The Washington Post about the role DC chefs are playing in First Lady Michelle Obama’s Let's Move campaign:
Witness the excitement at Murch Elementary, the school that chef Gray adopted in January. His first cooking lesson and lecture were scheduled for a Sunday -- after a major snowstorm. And yet about 250 parents and students arrived at the school auditorium in Northwest Washington. Gray, who will talk at the White House event about his experiences, stood on the stage and showed them how to whip up a cucumber and bread salad and a smoothie with blood orange and beet juices.
"The kids were slugging this stuff back," he recalls. "Parents kept saying they'd never seen kids do that."
Read more in “Chefs fill a tall order: School Lunch” (Washington Post, June 4, 2010). And check out this photo. Recognize the woman in the red dress on stage with Mrs. Obama? She's our very own assistant principal Norah Rabiah!
Read more about how GROW has grown:
Mustangs Nibble on First Harvest
May 10, 2010
 Parent volunteers from the GROW committee met with every class over the last two weeks to talk about the gardens and answer the students' questions. All of the volunteers reported that the kids are very excited about the garden and had great questions ranging from color (of vegetables) to compost to consumption – as in, when can we finally eat these vegetables?
On the latter point, members of the Murch community who came to the flea market and plant sale on Saturday had a chance to sample marinated rainbow radishes and a garden salad harvested that very morning. Many people discovered that they DO like radishes when they are fresh and home-grown – or rather, school-grown.
As for what's new in the garden: the radishes are harvested, the purple potatoes have sprouted, and the peas should be blossoming any day now. The blossoms turn to pea pods pretty quickly, so keep an eye on them to watch the transformation.
-- Lisa Burke
GROW Sponsors
The GROW Committee and Murch Elementary School community thank the following individuals and organizations for their generous support of the Murch vegetable gardens.
To become a sponsor, please contact
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