New Homes for Our Plants

Yuck! Slugs are sooooo gross, but soooo cool! They are bad for plants because they nibble on roots and leaves. This makes it hard for the plant to grow. We found a slug today when we were re-potting and splitting one of our tropical plants. We got rid of him.
It is important to re-pot plants because some plants use all the nutrients in the soil and need more soil. Re-potting them is healthy for them. Sometimes the roots take over the pot and take the shape of the pot. This is called being root bound. If we don't re-pot, the plant won't grow any larger.
We re-potted our two avocado trees today. We call them Big Brother (he's been alive for 2 years) and Little Sister (she was planted last summer). We hope that they'll be big and strong and grow avocados. We really like guacamole!
We also learned the term "back-filling" today. This means we put soil back over the roots and tamp it down to protect the plant's roots. It was awesome today! :)

We're Back!

We have finally started school again! We have new 2nd graders. Our old second graders are now 3rd graders. We are back at taking care of our gardens at school. Last week we picked evil spiky thistles. We are pulling them to make our gardens look better. The first place we pulled up thistles was in the reading garden out front. We also pulled out weeds in the gardens outside the 3rd grade classrooms. Today, we worked in our hosta garden. It had a bunch of weeds, like dandelions and baby trees. We picked and picked and picked all the grass that had grown in there, too! Some of us got to use snippers. They got to cut off all the dead flower stems off the hostas. The weird plant that we noticed last year has continued to grow. We decided to let it stay.