North-Grand Garden Club
Summer 2022 Garden Internship Program
Summer 2022 Garden Internship Program
For the Summer of 2022, a dedicated crew of students from Garden Club worked as paid Garden Interns, taking care of the garden, planting new crops, harvesting food for the Love Fridge, and welcoming incoming Freshman to North-Grand.
Our 2022 Garden Interns were: Melanie Mejia, Kimberly Ramos, Isaac Cervantes, Gabrielle Knight, Citlalli Resendiz, Juan Martinez, Adriana Ocampo, David Silva, and Joanna Rivera, with special guest Sebastian our resident 6 year old!
North-Grand Garden Club is an ongoing project. See our page for Winter & Spring 2022 here for a list of resources and recap of our activities!
Above: Student Garden Interns take care of the North-Grand Garden during our first Summer!
Garden Club: Fun and Food Sovereignty at North-Grand!
Inquiry Questions: What can we learn together through cultivating and tending plants? What kinds of joy and agency can we gain through producing our own food and medicinal plants for ourselves and our community? How can we activate the green space at North-Grand in order to benefit the North-Grand community?
Tending & Planting
A garden takes regular care and attention during the summer to make sure that plants thrive. Our daily practice included watering and weeding the beds.
After doing a big round of planting in the Spring, we planted more crops from seed that will be harvestable in the Fall (August, September, October) so that we can continue to supply our community with food. We planted carrots, beans, radishes, spinach, lettuce, and an assortment of herbs and flowers.
Below: Gabrielle Knight plants beans in the mounds of corn and squash to make a Three Sisters garden.
Above: Various crops growing in the garden - corn, peppers, tomatoes, ground cherries, zucchini, water melon, squash, huckleberries, and some surprise flowers.
Harvesting
Summer is the main time to reap the benefits of Spring planting! Throughout the summer, we harvested herbs for tea (tulsi, mountain mint, and clover), beets, lettuce, kale, tomatoes, cucumbers, zucchini, eggplants, culinary herbs, and more! All of our harvested produce went directly into the campus Love Fridge, with the exception of tea, which we're drying and will package and distribute in the Fall. We were happy to hear from Love Fridge staff that our produce was always picked up immediately! We've learned some lessons for next year - including that we need much more epazote and papalo!
Below: Melanie Mejia and Kimberly Ramos show off crops before taking them over to the Love Fridge.
Below: Isaac Cervantes harvests beets and prepares them for the Fridge with the help of David Silva.
Freshman Connection
Every Tuesday we welcomed groups of incoming North-Grand freshman into the garden. After a tour of the garden, they helped us plant new seeds! We hope that the garden will become a highlight of the North-Grand campus and a welcoming space to all.
Below: Citlalli Resendiz, Adriana Ocampo, and Inty Burga make a sign to welcome incoming Freshman to the garden for Freshman Orientation.
Field Trip to North Park Village Nature Center
At the end of our Internship program, we took a field trip to North Park Village Nature Center to tour the preserve and talk with Director Amaris Alanis-Ribeiro about her experience as an ecologist.
Pressing Flowers
As a kind of side-harvest, we collected and pressed flowers and leaves from the garden that we'll use to create future garden swag using cyanotype sun-printing on fabric. Stay tuned for it in Fall 2022! (Sebastian also made many bouquets for Garden Interns and for his mother)
