Summer+Care+Instructions

Summer Care Participants - Summer 09 May 24-30 The Corbin Family (MacKenzie will be in kindergarten next fall!) May 31- June 6 - The Joseph Nestler Family June 7 - 13--The Cooper Sullivan Family June 14 - 20---Grace Gerenday and Family June 21 - 27-- The Fredrickson Family June 28 - 4-- The Kear Family July 5 - 11 -- The Borra Family July 12 -18 -- The Wells Family July 19 - 25--Ms. Kleinrock & Ms. Kauffman July 26-Aug. 1st--The Bellamy Family

You are reading this page because you have offered to care for the garden for a week during the summer break. Please feel free to add your experiences here as well --- If you have not asked to be part of the wiki --- only say the word and I will grant you the keys to the kingdom! If you have problems you can contact Ms. Cauthen or Ms. Nall.

Watering
Tools are stored in the library --- Custodians are at school during the day. If you come at night you may need to bring your own implements. Tim has agreed to begin watering early in the morning (this is best for the garden) That means that you may not need to water during the week --- you can be his back-up and you can also help judge if the plants are getting enough water. Because the vegetables are in raised beds which drain easily --- you may need to water even if Tim waters some. Leave the black "drip" hoses in the vegetable beds they are a very efficient way to deliver water there. The sprinkler head can be used on the butterfly garden one half at a time --- You cannot use the green hose to water the garden since it has a slightly squashed end --- so just use the yellow hose for both gardens.

Dead Heading
The Coreopsis and some of the other flowers need to be dead-headed. Dead heading means removing the spent flowers. Since the plant after blooming invests itself in creating seeds -- if you remove the flower--it won't spend all that energy making seeds --- but more flowers.

Watering....
Soak the vegetable garden with the soaker hose -- for at lest 1 full hour of time. Becuase these are raised beds they will dry out more quikcly than the ground. There is a splitter on the hose and you can run the sprinkler at the same time in the Butterfly Garden.

Weeding
If we keep after the weeds no one will have to work too hard this summer! In the raised vegetable beds --- it is easiest to simply pull the weeds when they the soil is moist. The butterfly garden should not be difficult to tend, because it is heavily mulched, but it is poossilbe that the weeds will grow on top of the mulch. Not up yet in the vegetable beds are the carrots --- you should be able to distinguish them from weeds becase they will come up in a row! The major weed problem will be the crab grass which will invade the butterfly garden with a vengence -- It invades by putting out runners......so pull up as much of that nasty stuff as you can.

Caring for the BIG Butterfly Bush - In early June, cut off any branches which died over the winter using a standard pruning shears. This is also a good time to trim the butterfly bush to the shape you'd like it to be. It will bloom from mid July through September, and you should check and deadhead (remove spent flowers). This assures that the bush will put its energy into producing more flowers rather than seed.