My Visit to Alice Waters Edible Schoolyard at Martin Luther King Middle School

THE TOOL SHED AT MLK

I went to visit the Edible Schoolyard at Martin Luther King Middle School in Berkeley, CA. This was the first Edible Schoolyard started by Ms. Alice Waters, who is one of the inspirations for my school's garden. Ms. Shaina Robbins who is their Program Coordinator gave my mom and me the tour.



THE GARDEN IS ON ONE EDGE OF THE CAMPUS

The garden was started twelve years ago by tearing out an asphalt patch of the school grounds and is one acre in size. It has a kitchen which is also a learning classroom. The students pick the produce they grow and fix a dish to share in the classroom.

THE ALICE WATERS PHILOSOPHY

The garden has a circular outdoor trellis amphitheater, lots of chickens, a pizza oven, a greenhouse, a tool shed, a rainwater harvesting cistern, and lots of flowers and vegetables. It has a compost area, a small pond, and a chicken coop. The 8th graders even get to harvest grains to make flour and then get to make a pizza for one of their lessons. Pizza...yum.


A FEW OF THE VEGETABLE ROWS



THE CIRCULAR TRELLIS AMPHITHEATER



THE PIZZA OVEN

A SUNFLOWER & BEE POLINATOR



THE GARDEN AND TEEPEE



THE CHICKENS WERE WALKING FREELY

 

Labor Day Weekend

painting crew getting started

This weekend we did a LOT of painting, digging and shoveling. On Saturday the paint crew did the first coats of paint to our shed/kitchen. We started flattening the ground with rakes and shovels. My dad used a trencher to dig the irrigation trenches. The trencher was donated for the weekend from Bobcat West, a Pape' Company. On Sunday one volunteer crew laid in the irrigation purple pipe, the 7th grade girls started putting in the gopher wire, while the 8th grade girls shoveled mulch into the garden from the mulch pile donated by Treemasters. On Monday the mulch was finished by some 9th graders, the irrigation lines were pressure tested and we leveled the planter box beds. All in all a very busy three days for the garden volunteers who came to work. Here is what it looked like:

6th grade boys

Audrey, Emma's sister helping us paint

my dad using the trencher to dig

the main trench line for our purple pipe right down the middle

Irrigation pipe going into trench

two  shots of the work crews

cutting gopher wire for planters

8th grade girls shoveled a lot of mulch on Sunday

Peyton, a 6th grader, worked hard this weekend

Peyton's brother Tristan and dad Marcus lining the planters

Tristan and Joe finishing the mulch with bobcat on Monday

PEETS @ Northgate donated the coffee this weekend again.

How the garden looked today after the long holiday weekend

Garden in Progress

our garden sign

The weekend of August 28 and 29 more volunteers came to help build the garden. One day was windy and one day was hot but we still got a lot done. The deer fence was finished, the long retaining wall planters were built, the gates were started, we leveled the dirt and backfilled, we prime painted the shed/kitchen and we started putting up the woolly pockets. Whew! Thank you to everyone who came to help out.

Mr. Johnson and Nick

Fan & Mei  leveling dirt at planter wall

group shot

starting the gates

more dirt moving

our shed painting crew

me installing woollys

clean up

Fences and Planters

Last weekend our garden really took shape

Last weekend, we continued our work on our garden. On Saturday we built six planters. It might seem easy but it took a couple of hours. First we drilled the hole and then we put the screws into it. Each planter had 16 screws! My dad and Julia and Cameron Case worked on buidling the deer fence. On Sunday, we continued the fence but started to flatten the ground. Special thanks to the Case family from Kelly's Wishes Foundation, Sara, Julia Riggens and of course Gary & April Scharlach from APDW.

Our Rainwater Cistern

our 3,000 gallon cistern

Last weekend, thanks to Rachel Kamman and Mike Millsap, our 3,000 gallon cistern was moved to our garden. Rachel is with KHE a hydrology and engineering firm and Mike is with Millsap, Degnan & Associates, a general contractor. Thank you Rachel & Mike! And thanks to Gary, April, & Rachel we built the cistern’s 10' wide and 6” deep foundation so that we could bring it to a new home.

The cistern will collect rain from the classroom buildings roofs and gutters. This process is called rain water harvesting. Our garden will only need about 4,000 gallons of water a year so that means we will be self sufficient by using this rainwater to water our garden.

My mom, April, did the water calculations and will create a worksheet so that students can understand how to calculate how much water is collected and how much water the garden needs. She said that just one of the classroom roof's has the potential to harvest over 20,000 gallons of water in one year. That means a lot of excess roof water will run off into the Miller Creek watershed as stormwater than what we can use to water our garden with.

I found out that our school in Lucas Valley, San Rafael, gets an average of 34.29 inches of rain per year.

More Fence Posts...twenty seven and counting

Supervisor Susan Adams, Mr. Johnson (our principal) and Steve Slanec helped this past weekend doing more fence posts. We have a total of 35 posts including the ones for the Woolly Pocket wall. This weekend we finished 27 of them, so 8 more to go!

My dad, Gary organized us all to do the work. My Mom did the errand running.

                                Carimei and I taking a break.

How to level a post

I learned that cement could be heavy 

I used a tool called a level to make sure the posts were straight

I learned about setting and leveling posts last weekend and how to mix concrete for fence footings. Here is how it goes: It involves about three people. First you put concrete packets into the cement mixer, and spray water into every once in a while. After you put it into a wheel barrow you bring it over to a hole with a post in it. One person holds the post, one person smoothes the concrete and one person shovels it around the post. Once you get to the halfway mark, you use the leveling tool, and make sure its perfectly inline. Once you fill the hole to the top, you sit and let it dry.

The Latest Edible Garden Design Plan

Everyone has been asking me what will the garden look like when we are all done since some things have changed from my original design six months ago. So, here is the updated plan that my mom drew up for me that shows the recent changes. Most of the parts are still there from the first design. The main difference is that some things changed because of our site and some things changed because we decided to use different materials.

More Dirt, Rock and Fence Posts

Guillermo of Cagwin & Dorward drills post holes

Gary digging with bobcat

mixing the concrete

putting concrete footings in for woolly pocket posts

making sure the post is straight

Northgate PEETS coffee and doughnuts

The weekend of August 7 & 8th we moved more dirt to make the garden a flatter surface area. Peets Coffee & Tea at Northgate donated coffee and APDW donated the doughnuts. A local contractor, Cagwin & Dorward, donated a tractor with an auger and an operator, Guillermo, to drill our fence posts on Saturday. Guillermo did an awesome job. On Sunday, Gary finished up the holes and installed the wood headers for the drainage bands while April, Julia and myself, with help from the Slanec family, mixed concrete and installed the posts for our deer fence and woolly pocket wall. We shoveled gravel into the drainage bands and for the foundation for our shed/kitchen. We dug a lot of dirt for the area that our cistern will be going. We did not see any gophers today. Perhaps the bobcat and the tractor have finally scared them away.

Dirt!

We spent two days moving a lot of dirt a round to create the foundation of our garden. Gary Scharlach used a Bobcat donated by Tad Jacobs of TreeMasters. Every time we turned around there was a new gopher hole...we think we are going to need a LOT of gopher wire. We also staked the outline of the garden and prepared the construction of the drainage bands.