After exercising mindfulness for One Day Without Shoes with our lovely guests Angela and Courtney, we had a huge winter harvest of our veggies that thrived over Spring Break.

We were also thrilled to discover 6 budding artichokes on the artichoke bushes we transplanted a few weeks ago!

To top everything off, we made a minty-fresh fruit salad with fresh spearmint from our herb garden, mangos, bananas, kiwi, blackberries, strawberries, and minneolas.

Since the cabbages that we planted just after winter break were finally ripe for the picking, we shared some of our harvest with the WASC visiting committee, teachers, and staff who stopped by to visit the garden before we cut some up and made some vegan coleslaw.  Instead of the traditional mayo, we switched it up and used a sweet vinaigrette with julienned cabbage, carrots, apples, and red onions.

Since our garden has remained nameless for the past 6 months, we brainstormed potential names the past few weeks and this week we finally put it to a vote and “The Cobra’s Garden” won!

We’ve been busy at ALC the past three weeks and today we got to break in our brand new kitchen!

Even without the kitchen we’ve managed to whip up some yummy snacks featuring winter produce:

In the beginning of February, when our good friend Shana came to visit,  we made a mixed greens salad with avocado, mango, red onion, and carrots.

For Valentine’s Day we made some sweet strawberry lemonade to sip on while we made some valentines using dried lavender from the garden.

Today, for our inaugural run in the kitchen, we incorporated blood oranges into some classic guacamole and enjoyed it with dried seaweed – delicious!

We also addressed some bug problems we’ve been having in the garden!  While we’re very happy to see all the lady bugs, pests have been getting after our cauliflower.  So, to remedy  our problem, we mixed water, biodegradable soap, and olive oil together in a spray bottle and sprayed our budding cauliflower.

Last week we worked hard for our food!  We harvested some delicious swiss chard to use in a light citrus salad and we also harvested our broccoli florets to enjoy with some protein-packed hummus. To make the salad, we let the freshly picked swiss chard marinate in lemon juice, salt, and olive oil for about 30 minutes before adding avocado, pears, apples, tangerines, and mango.  The citrus was a perfect complement to the slightly bitter greens!  After the harvest our newest volunteer, Courtney Matchett, helped us plant tomatoes in our herb garden and our rooftop garden.  Since this week is finals week, we took it easy today!  We found a fuzzy caterpillar on the broccoli we were harvesting and picked the bell peppers that finally ripened.

Today at ALC, with the hot January sun beating down on us, we started preparing for our next planting season by clearing out all the weeds that flourished over the holiday and discussing what yummy vegetables we want to plant next week.   For our snack today we picked some lettuce for “garden tacos.”  Since grapefruit is in season, we wrapped the lettuce around some juicy slices along with red onions, avocado, and gorgonzola cheese.  The “tacos” were then drizzled with a lemon and agave vinaigrette – a perfect refresher after working in the hot sun!  We also picked a few flowers growing in our garden and learned how to dry them so that we can make beautiful thank you notes for friends and family.

Now that our harvest is over, we have begun to plan for the next season by planting spinach, kale, radish, and pea seeds in peet pots.  By the time winter break is over we should have some seedlings that are ready to go in the ground!  We also planted seeds in potting soil in mixed recyclables to bring home to add to our own gardens – including some pomegranate seeds from Kelly’s delicious snack!   Granola, Greek yogurt, honey, pomegranate, and pears made for quite a treat!

We started class this week tackling more weeds in the garden and checked out the citrus tree that is starting to bear fruit.  Urban Empowerment headed over to Gratts Elementary with Tomas and Josh to make plans for renovating the garden over there, and while they were busy across the street we got to work in our outdoor kitchen.  I created our snack this week to center around the much maligned beet that is currently in season.  In an effort to bring some love to this nutritious vegetable, the students helped pick some lettuce to create a bed for the chopped up raw beets and doused them with a mixture of olive oil, salt, pepper, and freshly squeezed lemon and orange juice.  Delicious!  While I headed the food prep effort, Kelly taught the students Composting 101 and showed them how to properly use our compost bin.  Quite a successful afternoon!

Thank you to Josh and Avery for taking some great photos of class this week!

This Tuesday started off on an exciting note – we saw some delicious looking peppers flourishing in the garden and a few of our seedlings in the peet pots have started to take root!  The excitement continued as we took advantage of the sunny Fall weather to plant more winter veggies and moved our citrus tree to the entrance to the garden where it can get more water.  Since figs are nearly out of season, Kelly incorporated this wonderful fruit into a great snack along with Brie, baguette, and pears.  We also enjoyed some refreshing cucumber water before painting new signs for the garden.

Since the rain gave our garden a good soak, this week at ALC we ventured into seeding with carrots, radishes, tomatillos, and spinach.  Hopefully our seeds will start growing roots so the students can take them home and start edible gardens of their own!

Kelly Burke joined us to help the student group Urban Empowerment prepare some amazing bruschetta with fresh basil from our herb garden.   We were also lucky enough to have one of the teachers bring lemons from her own garden to make fresh lemonade.  It was quite a spread and we’re looking forward to next week’s cooking lesson with Kelly!