Your mission: bring the garden to LIFE.
The Soil Squad: Gardening From the Ground Up. A hands-on spring elective at the California Street Campus, where students build living soil and grow real food.
- Grades 3–8
- Spring 2027 · 15 weeks
- Mon & Wed · 1:45–2:45
- No-till · No spray
Your mission, should you choose to accept it: The Soil Squad has been recruited by ILCS to fulfill a very important mission: bring the California Street Campus garden beds to LIFE!
The beds have gone dormant, and only a crew of highly trained soil agents can revive them. Agents will go undercover (well, underground) to recruit the garden's secret allies: earthworms, pill bugs, fungi, and billions of microbes.
Over 15 weeks, the Squad will build living soil with compost and no-till sheet mulching. They'll launch seeds and transplant seedlings, defend crops with companion plants instead of sprays, care for the fruit trees, multiply the lavender, and harvest what they grow.
Each agent joins a bed team and keeps a field journal of the mission, and veteran agents train new recruits.
This message will not self-destruct, but the food scraps will.
Agent training
Every class starts at the compost pile, then a short hands-on lesson, then real work in the beds.
- Compost opsTurn, feed, water, and take the pile's temperature.
- Soil buildingSheet mulch beds and meet the microbes doing the work.
- Seed startingGrow spring and summer crops from seed.
- TransplantingMove seedlings into the beds without shocking them.
- Pest defenseUse companion plants to deter and trap pests.
- Fruit tree carePrune and care for the pomegranate and citrus.
- PropagationTurn one lavender bush into dozens of new plants.
- HarvestPick, taste, and share what the Squad grew.
Schedule
- Term
- Spring 2027, 15 weeks
- Classes
- Mondays or Wednesdays
- Time
- 1:45–2:45 pm
- Grades
- 3rd–8th
- Where
- California Street Campus garden
12375 California St, Yucaipa - Class size
- Up to 15 agents per class
Monday and Wednesday are separate classes with their own students. Each class tends its own beds. A Friday class may open if both fill.
For parents
In plain terms: Soil Squad students bring the dormant California Street Campus garden back to life and learn to grow food the way healthy ecosystems do, with no tilling, no spraying, and soil built from the ground up.
Students work in bed teams, keep a garden journal, and take on more responsibility as the term goes on. Older students mentor younger ones.
Enrollment
- Enroll through the ILCS electives program, like any other elective.
- The fee covers all materials: planting mix, seeds, tools, and compost supplies.
- Kids get dirty. Send closed-toe shoes and clothes that can handle soil.
Community service workdays
Need service hours? Join the Squad on a workday. Workdays are open to any ILCS student with a parent, whether or not they're enrolled in the elective. Families help with the heavy jobs, like spreading wood chips, building the compost bins, and keeping the garden watered over breaks. Every family gets a signed record of its hours.
- A student and a parent come together.
- Dates are announced through ILCS and on this page.
- Bring gloves and water. Tools are provided.
To get on the workday list or ask a question, email Shawn Madden, an ILCS parent and the Soil Squad's instructor: