THERE'S A NEW GARDENER IN TOWN

Junior Avanthi Dev,

student of mine and close personal family friend,

 aspires to be a professional chef.

She has been wanting to start a sustainable garden on our campus,

so I told her I would help with the start up costs.

She's hoping to draw in other would-be gardeners and chefs within our student body

to share her passion. 

This is what she and a few of her volunteers,

 Alan Lim, Dea Kunika, and Justin Hogenauer have created over the past month. 

Avanthi is second on the left.

These students are hoping to eventually expand the garden even more 

and make the entire area behind our lunch hutch a working produce garden. 

The garden is being run to align with certain sustainable practices

 that Avanthi has researched and practiced at home in her own chef's garden.

She even did an internship up in Bakersfield this last summer learning much

 that she hopes to implement here at Whitney High,

 like recycling water, 

using compost, 

and collecting seeds. 

Avanthi wishes to popularize the implementation of sustainability 

into our everyday lives and tie it in with food, 

showing students that they can easily grow their own produce at home as a way to eat healthy

 and care for the environment but enjoy doing so. 

The garden consists of two raised beds that are filled with organic soils and compost, 

like coffee grounds,

 tea leaves, 

and worm castings. 

The students built a beautiful,

 rustic-looking trellis out of sticks and branches

 that they collected from CPE (the park adjacent to our school).

They connected them by doing a diagonal lash out of re-bar. 

For the Winter season, 

one of the beds is currently growing peas,

 chives,

 scallions,

 broccoli, 

arugula, 

carrots, 

radishes,

 and beets.

 The other bed will have flowers put in until the spring 

when they can be replaced with vegetables.

 To conceal the clay surrounding the garden,

 landscaping stones will be lain and the beds may be painted or stained.

Stay turned for more pix and updates.