Gardening at School (fail)

Molly and Jack go to the most unique school in our city.  Instead of one grade per class we have multi-age classrooms and our teachers are nick named the teachers without walls because of how much time we spend out of the classroom learning.  This school is also special because they want the parents there involved in there students learning and classroom environment!  How sad that this is unique.  Two weeks ago Molly's teacher asked if I would be interested in helping the class put in a vegetable garden.  The boxes were already there from a few years ago with dirt in them.  Now if I had been smart I would have said well let me look at what we have going on first, instead I said sure I would love to!  The teacher wanted to start with seeds but I was afraid that the kids wouldn't see any progress before they left for summer break so I headed off to Meijer early the next morning to buy a flat of started veggies.  The kids and I along with another mom got the beds cleaned out.  As they pulled more and more weeds I realized we hadn't seen a single worm and although we have had rain this Spring the soil was very sand like.  Maybe if I was smart I would have said 'ya know we should wait a day and add some compost to this before planting', but the kids had seen the starters and the bucket of seeds and I just couldn't tell them 'no'.  So with great trepidation we added the plants explaining why they couldn't be grouped to close together and that they would grow large and run over each other.  I could have saved my breath because this photo is the first day we planted, it looks pretty okay.  As of Saturday the whole thing looks totally pathetic.  Most of the plants are already dead including the marigolds.  The kids are really sad and bummed out.  I was looking forward to a gardening club with them all summer and showing off how great fresh bruschetta and pico de gallo is straight from the garden!

I guess I really do need to learn how to say 'No' once in a while.