The Gardens at the Club

As you all my remember I said that I was going to take over the raised beds we have at work and I did. They are lovely high raised beds that are 12 ft. by 4 ft. Each having 3- 4 ft x 4 ft sections in them. One of our board members who owns the feed and seed store here in town built them for us with grant money we received but unfortunately most of our staff just don't happen to be gardeners and the beds had gone to waste.
 Not this year! I made up a garden plan that had a vegetable for each bed but the vegetables are different colors in each section. So one bed will be all onions but there will be one section with red onions, one with yellow and one with white. Beans will be yellow, purple and greens. Squash will be green zucchini, yellow summer squash and white pattypan etc. etc. carrots, tomatoes, pepper. The  front beds will be different. There will be one for two different color cucumbers (green and lemon) but the center of that bed will have herbs.  Then the middle front bed will be for flowers; perennials in the middle and annuals on each side, then the last bed in the front will have strawberries on each side (a Junebearing variety and an everbearing one) and then a couple of blueberry plants in the middle.
I chose 9 children for the class so they could each have their own raised bed.

This, however, is what we started with:

Every bed looked like this except a few in the back that had actual cedar tree seedlings growing in them. I went out each day for about an hour last week and this week with a hoe that I brought from home (and some loppers one day) and I got the grass and weeds out of them. I could have done it with the kids but it just would have taken too much time and it was hard enough without them.  However, I didn't clean everything thing out, I dug out most of it but then they had to go through it and get out whatever was left or had been missed the first time.
We then took soil samples and gave took them to the feed and seed store to be tested. The ph was only 5 so he measured out some lime and told me exactly how much to put in each bed. We also did the same with fertilizer.
After the kids got the beds cleaned out we would add the fertilizer and lime and dig it in. Keep in mind the kids only have trowels and little forked hand tools.

We got some bulbs planted in the middle front bed. One large elephant ear bulb, two daffodils and two hyacinth that were potted, a bare root daylily, and some caladium bulbs. Doesn't look like much now but soon...

We drew numbers to see which child got which bed. I then gave them a chance to trade if they didn't get the bed they wanted. There are only three boys in the class but one of them was extremely happy to get this flower bed.
Anyway, stay tuned, I'll have more posts on this though I won't share the pictures of the children at work, much as I would like to, I just don't have permission to do that.