In mid-summer, we replant certain foods that will complete their life cycle before the students return for their fall term.  Foods like beans, squash, and cucumber are replanted so they are available for our welcome back to school potato harvest and food sampling and for the harvest soup the last week of September.  Students plant them in spring for summertime events and for volunteers who help with summer maintenance.

The return to school is focused on curriculum related lessons with a tasting at the end of class of a featured food.  When we plant in fall, we are highlighting plants with unique lifecycles for our hardiness zone.  We emphasize special plant adaptations that help with winter survival.

Fall planting is used to get ready for spring. 

• Students plant spring flowering bulbs in flower beds.  We mainly plant daffodils since the deer leave them alone and daffodils are prolific reproducers for several years.  Daffodils are a great flower to help students examine and understand flower parts.  Follow this link for more information about bulbs.

• Garlic is planted in class garden beds.  We plant hard neck garlic since it is winter-hardy.  We save some bulbs from the summer harvest to plant cloves in the fall.

• We plant two kinds of winter-hardy perennial onions in class garden beds, Egyptian walking onions and bunching onions.  Bunching onions, also referred to as scallions, do not produce large bulbs.  "Bunching" means they will produce a grouping of onions in the ground.  Harvest the older onions, leave the younger onions in the ground, and you'll have a continuous supply.  Bunching onions send up a flower stalk with a round head of flowers that produce seeds.  Walking onions will also bunch in the ground, but instead of a seed head, they create a cluster of small sets at the top of a stalk.  "Walking" comes from the plant's habit of planting its sets when the clump of sets becomes heavy and bends the stalk to the ground.  The sets can be harvested for eating, but be sure to save some to plant in the fall.  Harvest some of the young, green onions in spring and leave some for more sets.