This spring has been very exciting as we prepare to start our first ICP garden. First the Orcas measured and staked out the plot. The Pa (a grandpa) came with his tractor and turned the soil.

The Orcas brought their nature journals out and sat in the empty garden.

We all thought about what we could see, hear, and smell. And we drew what we wished we could grow in the garden.

Some dads helped the Dolphin and Orca classes build the raised beds.

It was hard, but important, work.

We made paper planting pots. These will decompose in the soil when we plant our plants. We filled these pots with pea seeds. Look they came up!

It was exciting to see the seedlings grow.

We had to get the rocks out of the garden,

and loosen the soil.

Then we had to dig holes for the raised beds.

The Dolphins worked together to carry the raised bed into the garden and put it in the holes.

The Orcas worked hard digging the holes for their raised bed.

Look how deep our holes are!

Hooray! We did it!

Then a dump truck came and delivered garden soil for the raised beds.

We worked together to fill the beds.

Then we planted sunflower seeds. These will be huge sunflowers, and will bring the pollinators and birds to our garden.

We worked to mmove some more soil.

The Orcas built a trellis for the peas to climb on. The peas hold on with little pea hands, or tendrils, and climb up tall. We wonder how tall they will grow.

Then we planted the pea seedlings and helped them reach for the strings on the trellis.

The Dolphin class watered the bed before planting the strawberries.

The mother plants are happy in the soil. We gave them a good drink of water.

We have made lots of garden decorations. Here we are making hot rocks: melting crayons on hot rocks. We also painted rocks. These will mark some of our garden beds.

We wore our garden gloves while we worked so we didn't burn our hands on the hot rocks.

We headed to the garden to make Slug Pubs.

We poured the beer into containers. The slugs love the beer, and will come in and drown. Then they can't eat our plants!

The garden needs lots of care. Here we work together to water the peas.

We put out some beneficial ladybugs.

Look at them all over the soil!

I can see them!

One is crawling on my hand!

Ew! Robbers! Tent caterpillars will eat the leaves off our trees, and even eat our garden plants.

We cut some of the tents out of the trees. Some were so high we couldn't reach them.

Look how many little caterpillars there are!

It has taken a lot of team work to get our garden this far.

Time to make some labels for the garden beds.

It took a lot of hammering to get them in the soil.

Each class has planted a bag of potatoes. First we poked holes in the bottom of the bags of compost. Then we poured the compost out to use to feed the soil in our garden. It is good to reuse these bags instead of just throwing them out. Then we added garden soil to the bottom of the bags.

And then in went the mother potatoes. These were covered with soil. The baby potatoes will grow under the soil. As the potato plants grow, we will keep adding soil until the bag is full. We can't wait until next fall to harvest our buried treasure!