Welcome Back To School!

We are about a month into the school year, and it’s off to a very sweet start!  We are in the midst of our first 6th grade lessons, which welcome and orient students to the garden and kitchen with warmth, intention, and of course, delicious produce! We teach students about Honorable Harvest principles in the garden, and put those principles to use while we harvest cherry tomatoes (sungold & sweetie varieties, pictured above), along with fresh Genovese basil to taste.  We also harvest two types of kale - lacinato/dinosaur and Siberian/curly - that we then turn into kale chips in the kitchen the next day! Check out our recipe here. 

We are currently teaching about seasonality - what it means and why it matters - along with an introduction to our compost piles, which are the heart of our garden!  We incorporate almost all of the food scraps from the district’s central kitchen, located right here on King’s campus, into our hot compost piles, where it returns to the earth as nutrient rich compost.  6th graders get introduced to this system early on and help us build, turn, and sift compost throughout their 3 years here. 

We have also already hosted two amazing harvests during student lunch times: potatoes and apples.  We harvested almost 200 pounds of apples with students last week, and they got to press some of them into juice right after.  Such a delicious way to spend a day!

A sampling of our apple varieties, students using our apple press, and over 200 lbs of apples harvested!
Apple Photos Credit: Ashley Rouse

Finally, I am so pleased to introduce our two newest educators: Lily and Dee, both pictured below!  Lily is joining us after spending two years with us as a California Climate Action fellow, and Dee comes to us with lots of farm and urban garden experience!  Both are incredible additions to the team, and deserve the warmest of welcomes. 

Lily Noto (she/her)

Dee Thompson (they/them)

As we get close to the Autumn Equinox, I encourage each of you to savor the final moments of summer.  May you soak up the sun, get your body in water, and eat many delicious tomatoes, cucumbers, berries, and stone fruit! Here’s to the start of a new school year, where we’ll get to embody our values of nourishment, stewardship, and community every day.  I’m grateful to lead this team and to get to do this work. 

Thank you for reading and for your support!