June 1, 2011
Murch Garden volunteers needed Friday, June 3 for to help with the third grade math-oriented project on from 9 to 10:30am. We will have 75 students planting 15-20 container gardens of 3-5 plants each. The focus of the gardening lesson is math -- volume, size, estimating, etc. The more parents we have to help, the more the students will be able to get out of the lesson.
Planting Success
Thank you to the parents and teachers who helped make the May 20th butterfly garden planting a success. We got all 100 plants in the ground with 7 classes in two hours - quite a feat. Having parent volunteers on hand made a huge difference. Pictures are posted on our GreenScenes planning site.
Summer Watering
Each weekend, we will need a team of at least two parents to help water the gardens (butterfly, textile, and vegetable) and the newly transplanted trees. Please contact Judy Ingram with the weekends this summer when you can help. This is a fun, easy, and critically important activity for the health of our Murch gardens that can be easily done with your kids.
Adopt a Plot!
The butterfly garden needs helpers to keep the weeds down over the summer. The garden is divided into manageable plots. We need volunteers assigned to plots who will get to know the plants in that plot and keep the weeds down. Once your plot has been assigned to you, you can keep up with the weeding at your own convenience. We will also have monthly group weedings on the second Friday of the month. Meet Karen Abrams, Fri, June 10, in the butterfly garden from 9-10:30 a.m.
May 19, 2011
Albino Corn Seedling
A mystery has emerged from the soil in the Native American Three Sister's Garden. Ms. Bergin's first-grade class planted nine hills of corn in late April. The three hills on the South end of the garden were planted with seeds saved from last year's corn crop. This experiment has lead to an interesting development: an albino corn plant. While all of the other corn shoots are green, one is white. Hurry to the garden to see this mysterious corn plant -- but don't wait too long. Because this albino plant has no chlorophyll, it cannot make food from sunlight. This means that it will not survive for very long.
May 11, 2011
Thanks to everyone who helped prepare the Murch butterfly garden last weekend in preparation for the May 20th planting. Please feel free to take any excess daylillies that are piled under the holly tree.
Textile Garden
Murch is getting a new Textile Garden! This garden will showcase plants used in textiles and cloth dying, like cotton, flax, sunflowers, and giant coreopsis. Several classes use clothing and textiles as learning themes, and our art teacher, Ms. Cutelis, has been dying for a dying garden! Please join us on Saturday, May 14, 9 am to noon, to dig the new plot, prepare the soil, and install the border next to the vegetable plots. A first grade daisy troop will plant the first flowers there on Sunday. Contact:
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Gardening and Math
May 17: Calling volunteers, especially third grade parents. All 75 third graders will be exercising their math skills by transplanting starter plants and herbs into containers to adorn the school yard. If you can join us on Tuesday, 9 - 10:30 a.m., please contact
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or Heather Harrison.
Signs, Signs, Signs
If you and your children like to make signs, please contact
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about making signs for our garden. We have lots of seeds starting to grow, and we need to give reminders about protecting our garden space. We also want to set up some outdoor education posters.
Want to Plant Corn at Home?
We have extra corn seeds from last year's harvest. If you'd like some to try planting at home, contact
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Take a Walk on the Wild Side
Take a self-guided nature walk with your kids through the butterfly garden. We are posting monthly signs to explain garden developments, butterflies to watch for, and fun plant and insect facts.
Volunteer needs
RedWiggler worm foster homes
Murch owns three worm bins that are used by the fourth grade during the school year to learn about compost and soil. These contained, tidy, odor-free bins need homes over the summer. If you are interested in trying your hand and vermi-composting, it is a fun and rewarding experience. Your kids will love the worms and you will the love the compost you get. And no worries if you go on vacation. The worms only need to be fed about once a week. If you're interested in being a summer foster family for our redwigglers, please contact
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.
Summer watering
With all the planting going on this spring, we will need people to help water our gardens and trees over the summer. We set up a schedule and do a training, so if you are looking for a low-key summer volunteer activity you can do with your kids, keep your eyes open for our watering schedule sign-up list that will come out later this Spring.
Thanks to all of you for making gardening at Murch happen!
April 25, 2011
Third-grade Gardeners Say, "Peas, Please!"
A volunteer corps of about 20 third graders planted sugar snap peas during Recess in the Garden on April 14. The students divided themselves into interest groups of Scientists, Mathematicians, and Journalists. While the journalists drew sketches and took photos and notes for stories, the mathematicians read the seed packets and measured the plot. The math group also plotted the holes using the correct depth and spacing and helped the other students properly place the pea seeds.
The scientists gathered and recorded important facts and observations in each class's Garden Journal. The students snapped open fat, edible pods of fresh sugar snap peas to see the plump, green peas inside. They compared these seeds to dried pods the Murch GROW Team saved from last year's crop of sugar snap peas. They observed how the brown, shriveled pods easily cracked in their fingers and listened as the dried peas rattled inside.
"These would make a good maraca," said one girl.
They also compared the fresh seeds and saved seeds to the seeds inside the packet bought from a garden store. The store-bought seeds had been soaked in water to soften the outer shell so they might sprout earlier. When you visit the garden, look for the metal pea supports. Watch as the sugar snap pea plants emerge from the soil and climb the metal and string ladder. The longer row of peas holds the organic, store-bought peas. The students planted a shorter row of the seeds saved from last year's garden. Watch with the third grade to see if there is a difference between saved seeds and store-bought seeds.
Several children took extra seeds home to plant for themselves. One girl confided that she planted a seed in a secret place on campus. She'll get to see how that seed survives without the advantages of great soil, careful watering and proper climbing support. Another student planted one of the fresh peas from the snack bowl. Budding scientists one and all!
>When the planting was done, the volunteers snacked on the leftover sugar snap peas dipped in hummus. When the recess bell rang, the students grabbed a last pea pod to munch on the way back to the school building. One boy said, "My mom will be so happy that I ate a vegetable!"
Third graders can join the GROW volunteers for Recess in the Garden sessions throughout the growing season as the sugar snap peas help them practice math, science, writing, and art skills. --Lisa Lavelle Burke
November 2010
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.
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
Did you know...
The Fall Equinox, also known as Alban Elfed, Autumn Equinox, Autumnal Equinox, Cornucopia, Feast of Avilon, Festival of Dionysus, Harvest Home, Harvest Tide, Mabon, Night of the Hunter, Second Harvest Festival, Wine Harvest, Witch's Thanksgiving, and the first day of autumn, arrived at 3:09 a.m. on Sept. 23.
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. >>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. Read "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:
The Butterflies are Here!
The beginning of the 2010-2011 school year coincides with the arrival of butterflies in the DC area. At Murch's Ms. Timony Butterfly Garden, monarch and eastern swallowtail butterflies have already been spotted. >> Read more.
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Cycle of Life
 Our class has been extremely busy studying the lifecycle of the monarch butterfly. We have visited Brookside Gardens "Wings of Fancy" live butterfly exhibit, read lots of great non-fiction books, and observed live caterpillars in our own classroom garden. In these pictures students are observing caterpillars that are about to pupate. –Alyssa Lipshie
Butterfly Garden Gets Facelift
In the spring of 2010, Murch Second and Pre-K classes kicked off a two-year restoration of the Ms. Timony Butterfly Garden. In May, every child in each class got to plant at least one native variety of plant loved by our area butterflies. >> Read more.
GreenScene News
Catch the Weatherbug
Have you noticed the Weatherbug button in the left-hand column of our website? And have you checked out that funny aerial on the cupola? Thanks to the HSA, which funded the equipment, Murch has its own meteorological-monitoring station. The sensors and rain gauge on the cupola continually collect information and transmit it to Weatherbug.com. You can also get the latest weather by checking the LED readout on the box mounted above the security desk next to the front office.
Students Investigate Murch's Energy Vampires
May 27, 2010
 A group of students from Ms. Mathur's fourth-grade class presented the findings of their "energy investigation" at the Koshland Science Museum of the National Academy of Sciences. The presentation was the result of a yearlong energy project with the Saving Energy in DC Schools program.
The DC Dept of the Environment to the Alliance to Save Energy funded the project through a grant and provided Murch with an energy investigation tool kit that included a watt meter, infrared thermometer, and hygrometer.
The students identified the different types of energy used by the school, including the natural gas used for heating and the electricity used for lighting, air conditioning and nearly everything else. The students focused their investigation on Murch's electrical use and how it could be saved. The students learned that Murch's electric bill averages $3,000/month. We conducted an energy audit of the library to see where all of the energy is being consumed. One of the more surprising things that we discovered is that many electronic items use electricity when they are plugged in even if they are not turned on. The only way to prevent appliances from using energy unnecessarily is to unplug them.
The students took photos while they conducted their investigation. The photos were a brilliant visual representation of their energy investigation. To help with their presentation at the Science Museum, we arranged the photos into a Powerpoint presentation. While the students gave their presentation, we ran into technical difficulties. Undaunted, the students maintained their composure and improvised their remarks.
Project participants included Eliza Zizka, Grace Marion, Sarah Desta, An Nguyen, Rebecca Simon, Shrabonti Turna, Julia Anderson, Emily Colleye, Ella Weiner, Madeleine Yando, and Jazba Iqbal. Some of the energy investigation students also made up a rap about saving energy which is posted on YouTube. --Regina Bell
  
 Murch Twins Are Gardeners Turned Authors
Twins Annie and Veda Hedgepeth are co-authors of We Grew It, Let's Eat It!
>>Read more.
Rock On!
  To mark the transition from studying rocks to studying plants, Ms. Bickart's kindergarten class planted a rock garden this spri ng.
The class was introduced to three plant families: Cactus; Stonecrop; and Bromeliad. The students learned how plants that grow in dry and rocky environments adapt to the low water supply. Some store water in their leaves, stems or roots. Others have leaves that can hold water like a cup. And other plants absorb water from the air.
Next, the students examined eight of these plants and correctly sorted them into their plant families. Once the plants were planted in their new classroom home, the children added their favorite rocks, left over from their rock study unit, to decorate their new rock garden.
Our plant study is off to a rocky start, but in this case, that's a good thing!
--Sarah Bickart, kindergarten teacher
Fourth Graders Adopt Trees – and Plant One of Their Own
  Mrs. Mathur's fourth graders have been working on a project with neighborhood trees. Each student adopted a tree in his or her neighborhood and observed it for several months: taking pictures and notes, making leaf and bark rubbings, and using their tree as an inspiration for reading and writing. Students also conducted research and examined the usefulness of trees to the urban environment.
In February, the class enjoyed a visit from Earl Eutsler, an arborist with the DC Urban Forestry Administration, who taught the students about trees in the Murch neighborhood. He also presented the class with branches of flowering trees so the class could observe them bloom in their room before the trees outside.
On May 26, Mr. Eutsler visited Mrs. Mathur's class for a second time. He taught the students about the classification of trees by leaf arrangement, and then took them on a neighborhood walk to identify trees and to study the arrangement of leaves.
The highlight of Mr. Eutsler's visit was when he helped the students plant a class tree on the hill near the peace pole. Now these fourth graders have a tree to call their own, right on Murch grounds.
-- Asha Mathur, 4th grade teacher
Tour de Forest
Murch has the greenest school yard in Washington, according to Jim Woodworth, director of Tree Planting at Casey Trees, who led a two-hour tour on September 11 of the 100+ trees the non-profit has planted in partnership with the Murch community over the past five years. >>Read more.
Murch Joins Mission to Restore District's Tree Canopy
   Murch has been involved with the Casey Trees Community Tree Planting since the nonprofit program's inception in 2005. As part of Casey Trees's mission is to restore the District's tree canopy, which has decreased rapidly as the city has been developed, more than 100 trees have been planted on or around the Murch grounds. Casey Trees provides the trees and instructional information; our citizen foresters assist in the planting and ongoing watering. The program benefits Murch and the community in a variety of ways: beautifying school grounds, providing shade from native trees, helping to clean the air, and educating children and adults about the important role of trees in urban environments to combat climate change.
To fulfill this mission Casey Trees plants trees, engages thousands of volunteers of all ages in tree planting and care, provides year-round continuing education courses, monitors the city's tree canopy, develops interactive online tree tools and works with elected officials, developers, community groups to protect and care for existing trees and to encourage them to add new ones.
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