truckfarmomaha | Mentions | Truck Farm Omaha

Maranda and I have had a blast during the fall growing season. We have seen a number of our 2013 participants join us for afterschool program during the summer and fall sessions for 2014! This means the students are becoming more familiar with the school gardens, the truck and we’re all learning more about one another as individuals.

This summer we started our own sweet potato slips with Wild Cats Club participants. We planted the sweet potato plant starts in a new hugelkultur garden bed built on site with youth at King Science & Magnet Technology. In October we harvested the sweet potatoes! (photo 1) While Maranda and I prepare many exciting hands-on activities and art projects, the youth still prefer to harvest ripe produce, herbs and flowers. Students love to take home their production and everyone is learning to share and portion the bounty. Strawberries are a hot commodity, so we decided to start a second strawberry patch for 2015. (photo 2)

The garden site with Nothing But Net’s Trailblazers program at Lewis & Clark has also grown. Truck Farm has adopted six large raised garden beds on site and also started three new growing areas for 2015 using a sheet mulching technique.(photos 3 and 4) Again, one strawberry bed isn’t enough! The photos below showcase some of the garden beds and harvest taken home this fall. (photos 5 and 6) The last image is from the herb garden. (photo 7) We will be creating different spice and seasoning packets during the next few weeks for youth to take home for winter break.

Our newest partner, North Star, has been exciting and full of laughter. (photo 8) We are so grateful to North Star and the Sahler Community Garden for offering us two garden beds this fall. Starting a garden at the beginning of September can be difficult, but ours has been fruitful. With a lot of homemade seed tape, the young men of North Star filled two community garden plots with greens and radishes. We decided these vegetables and edible flowers taste better with ranch dressing. (photos 9 and 10) The boys even transplanted some herbs from Truck Farm into a newer garden area for next year.