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Featured Student »Marshall Featured Student: Summer Relation During this past semester my class and I have been doing great things in the garden. We have picked squash bugs, planted, harvested, and my favorite part, learned. I have looked at learning in a different way ever since the garden started. I do hope we will have it next year. 7th graders and 8th graders should get more active in the garden because if they don’t, then they will wish that they had in the future.

Mabelvale Garden Update »Mabelvale Garden Update This past week, Karl Heinbockel and fellow Delta Garden Study interns have had the opportunity to escape the fluorescent lights of the office and work in the bright sunshine at the Mabelvale Magnet Middle School gardens and greenhouse. In spite of the oppressive heat, there is still much to do to prepare for the coming school year at Mabelvale Magnet Middle School. We are removing the residue from last year's crops (and weeds!) and replacing them with a buckwheat cover crop to revitalize the soil. The buckwheat cover crop suppresses weed growth and once tilled in will add important organic material back into the soil. This allows new plants the ample nutrients necessary to blossom with great vigor. Healthy soil has been our focus this summer. In the fall, we will concentrate our efforts at producing a variety of food crops with the help of our students at Mabelvale! In the coming weeks, we will be continuing to clean up and organize the garden and greenhouse spaces so that this school year will be a great one for Delta Garden Study's showcase garden - Mabelvale!

FrontPage Article »See the Progress on our New Gardens! Don't forget to visit our Garden Schools’ webpages for pictures and stories about the progress of our new gardens. Liana, Kevin, Ryan and Cale have been busy developing their sites, planting a late summer garden, and getting to know their communities. Many thanks to all of their community members who have donated materials, equipment and labor!

About The Delta Garden Study »About The Delta Garden Study The Delta Garden Study is a $2 million research study funded by the USDA’s Agricultural Research Service designed to prevent childhood obesity and social risk behaviors, and improve academic achievement, in middle school children in the Delta and Central regions of Arkansas.

Student of the Week: Marshall's Clay Horton

In the past four months I have enjoyed having Cale and Rachel helping us with our garden! Some see this as a lame recess, but I don’t think so. I think it is an opportunity to explore and learn new things! We have gotten to harvest, plant, and try many different things. Thanks to one of our wonderful garden supervisors we got to eat many of the products that we planted and harvested. Rachel is a very good cook, but if we didn’t have Cale planting the vegetables Rachel wouldn’t have been able to cook us anything.

Personally, I love having the garden. I would love to see it continue next year so we could experience this outdoor classroom in the eighth grade, and even in the years to follow. I have loved the garden program and don’t have any complaints. If I could change anything it would be the fact that we don’t get enough time in the garden. I would love to see the garden here when I graduate! I would also love to see Cale and Rachel here when I graduate. So please keep the garden, Cale, and Rachel as long as you can!

School of the Week: Harrisburg Middle School

The kids built and used weather instruments this week, including barometers, psychrometers, and anemometers (if you don’t know what any of those instruments are, don’t worry—we didn’t either before teaching this lesson!). We had some really interesting conversations with the students about air pressure, wind patterns, and temperature which is a nice prep for next week’s lessons on the greenhouse effect and global warming. The kids sampled our sweet and crunchy ‘Little Finger’ carrots and helped us spread rabbit manure over the garden beds. By the way, we’ve discovered that some kind of radical transformation takes place between 7th and 8th grade—before, shoveling poop is a fascinating and hilarious activity, and afterwards it is apparently disgusting and unseemly.

Study Timeline

About the Delta Garden Study

The Delta Garden Study is a $2 million research study funded by the USDA's Agriculture Research Service, designed to prevent childhood obesity and social risk behaviors, and improve academic achievement, in middle school children in the Delta and Central regions of Arkansas. Led by Dr. Judy Weber, Associate Professor in the Department of Pediatrics in the College of Medicine at UAMS, the study's primary outcome variables are increased fruit and vegetable intake and increased minutes of physical activity. Secondary variables include reduction in body mass index (BMI) and body fat, reductions in social risk behaviors, and increased school bonding, improved student grade point averages and benchmark testing scores.

Delta Garden Study is Recruiting Schools

The Delta Garden Study School Recruitment Team is actively seeking middle schools in the Delta and Central regions of the state to participate in the 2012-2013 academic year.

Intervention study schools will receive:

	1 acre garden with Greenhouse
	Full time Garden Manager for 12 months
	All necessary tools and materials to support the garden
	Full year of garden-based science lesson plans mapped to the state frameworks
	Technical support from the Delta Garden Study Staff

Internships

Interested in doing an internship for Delta Garden Study? Fall internship positions are available and applications will be accepted on a rolling basis until August 15th. Check out our Internships Positions available.

Application deadlines are:

Summer - March 31st
Fall - August 15th
Spring - November 15th

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ACHRI's Annual Report

The ACHRI Childhood Obesity Prevention Program, of which the Delta Garden Study, under the direction of Dr. Judith Weber, is a key component, was recently featured in the Arkansas Children’s Hospital Research Institute’s 2011 Annual Report. The program provides leadership and coordination at the local and state levels for research, education, and policy that focus on understanding the causes of infant, childhood, and adolescent overweight and obesity and on addressing strategies for the prevention and reduction of this epidemic. To learn more about the program, please visit the program website

Delta Garden Study named as a FoodCorps Host Site
as Part of 10-State Launch

FoodCorps, a new national AmeriCorps school garden and farm-to-school service program, has named the DGS as one of 10 Host Sites it will collaborate with to launch the initiative. FoodCorps will serve vulnerable children, improving access to healthy, affordable food, while training young leaders for careers in food and agriculture. FoodCorps service members will be placed at each of our four garden schools during the 2011-2012 school year

See the Progress on our New Gardens!

Don't forget to visit our Garden Schools’ webpages for pictures and stories about the progress of our new gardens. Liana, Kevin, Ryan and Cale have been busy developing their sites, planting a late summer garden, and getting to know their communities. Many thanks to all of their community members who have donated materials, equipment and labor!