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The Spring Plant Sale at the Woodstock Union HS/MS Greenhouse is coming up! The sale will run from May 1st-31st and be open from 9am-2pm on school days. We will be open late for school staff (until 6 pm) on Monday, May 6th.

We made a few really exciting changes this year. Students start more than half of our plants by seed but we do have to source some more difficult-to-start plants (think petunias and geraniums) from a nursery. This year, all of those plants came from a nursery that is neonicotinoid free (read more about the effects of neonicotinoids on pollinators here)! Students collected and sowed MANY native plants this year. Some will be available this spring and some will be available to pre-order for fall planting. See our full list of plants here.

This year, we will also be selling No Mow May signs and Fedco seeds for varieties that you may want to direct-sow in your garden.

We will be holding a plastic plant pot collection drive again. We can only reuse 4-pack and 4” square pots in good condition. We will accept other sized pots and broken pots (if they are #2 or #5 plastic) that we will recycle through a special program but they must be clean and sorted from the 4-pack and 4” pots that we can reuse. As always, bring cardboard boxes if you have them for transporting your plants to your car.

Please contact me with any questions.

Happy Spring!

Abbie Castriotta (Greenhouse/Garden Manager)

By Ada Mahood

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On Wednesday, April 17, some fun(gi) things were happening in the greenhouse. Woodstock Alumni David Andrews and his partner Erin Donahue from Tiny Acres Farm, visited the greenhouses to demonstrate how to plant mushrooms and to talk about their business. Students engaged in hands-on activities such as drilling the holes for the mushroom spawn, learning how to put the spawn in the holes and sealing them with beeswax.
For a little bit of a backstory, David went to WUHSMS and took Agricultural classes that were offered. One year he and Kat Robbins, who helps coordinate our CRAFT department, went to Cobb Hill farm where he learned the ins and outs of mushrooms. This hands-on experience sparked his interest in becoming a mushroom farmer. He moved out to Colorado after high school graduation, where he and his partner started experimenting and growing mushrooms for their own personal use. When they moved to Maine a few years later they made the decision to switch from personal growing to commercial farming of mushrooms. Their business has grown through local farmers markets, and restaurants. Right now they have over 2,000 logs in production. They inoculate (plant) around 1,000 a year. David's long term goal is to have 10,000 logs in production.

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In those 2,000 logs they grow many varieties of mushrooms including, 13 varieties of Shitake, 4 varieties of Oyster mushrooms, Lions Mane, Chestnut, etc.

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All of the CRAFT classes were involved in inoculating around 60 oak logs donated by Leo Maslan. The students drilled holes in the logs and filled them with Blue Oyster and Shitake mushrooms. Middle School students “planted” a Wine Cap mushroom bed in our permaculture garden. For the Shitake, it’ll take about 12-18 months for them to fully become mushrooms, but the Wine Caps take as little time as 1 month. Come by and see the fruits of our labor!

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