KELSEYVILLE — The garden at Kelseyville Elementary School has been entirely renovated with the assistance of the CAL FIRE and California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) Conservation Camp program.
Inmates who have been carefully screened and who are able-bodied are assigned to the camp. CDCR”s Conservation Camps program provides the state”s cooperative agencies with an able-bodied, trained workforce for fire suppression and other emergencies such as floods and earthquakes, according to the CDCR”s website. Crews also work on conservation projects on public lands and provide labor on local community service projects.
The original garden was established 20 years ago and redwood beds were rotting out and irrigation was suffering, according to Helen Finch.
“On top of that, eight years of watering and fertilizing by the Kelseyville Kids” Garden Club had the Bermuda grass in high-speed grow mode,” she stated. “Volunteers were no longer able to weed fast enough and the grass was becoming a serious nuisance.”
Michelle Malm, director of food services for Kelseyville Unified School District (KUSD), who is responsible for the Farm-to-School project, was able to secure funding for the purchase of all new redwood beds, soil to fill them, new irrigation and weed cloth and mulch to help keep the Bermuda grass at a manageable level in the future.
Finch was responsible for overseeing the project. She, and 30 men in orange, uplifted hearty perennials (roses, asparagus, strawberries, blackberries, raspberries and irises), cleaning any traces of Bermuda grass roots from them and stored them.
Gene Dowdy provided the service of his skip loader to help with the relocation of large tractor tires and to remove the old beds and root-infested soil away from the site.
The crew of inmates spent two full days during Thanksgiving break and two more full days Christmas break setting fence posts; building the redwood beds and compost bins; digging out trenches for the new irrigation; leveling ground; setting and filling the boxes; laying out and securing weed cloth; replacing fences and hanging gates, Finch stated.
Then, they loaded a flatbed trailer with all of the scraps and gave the entire area around the garden a clean up.
“The garden at Kelseyville Elementary, now an active part of the Farm-to-School Garden Program, has never looked better, and children in the Kelseyville Kids Garden Club are very excited about planting and providing exceptional vegetables for use in Michelle”s kitchen at Kelseyville High School (KHS),” Finch stated.
A team of six sixth-graders from Mountain Vista Middle School, the first Kelseyville Kids” Garden Club alumni allowed to return as volunteers during their seventh period classes, will be responsible for getting perennials back in the ground and planting some vegetables that they started before the Christmas break.
They will welcome fourth- and fifth-graders out to the garden on Feb. 4 to begin planting peppers, heirloom tomatoes and herbs for their annual spring plant sale on May 10, as well as lettuce, snow peas, squash, beans, corn and asparagus for the school kitchen.
The Kelseyville Kids” Garden Club is in need of volunteers to aid and assist in its new garden, Finch stated.
“Sixth-graders have spent the last four months learning to be leaders,” she stated. “They have studied composting, propagation, seeding and intensive planting methods. They will be prepared to share this with incoming garden club members, but they will require support from adults to help them keep their teams of five-to-six children on track.”
Volunteer days are Tuesday and Thursday from 1:30 until 3 p.m. Volunteers often receive vegetable plugs and harvested fruit.
For information, call 279-9400.
To buy tamales, salsa or soup prepared by Farm-to-School students in the kitchen at KHS, email Malm at mmalm@kvusd.org to place your order.
