PRODUCTS AND PROJECTS For Schools

Our products are designed specifically with the amatuer and child gardener in mind. Our Plant-A-Gen!us product in particular is especially designed for kids and teachers setting up a School Garden.  A CD-ROM full of additional information is included. Schools can use this, together with the more advanced Plant-A-Genda product, for their teachers and students, to provide vegetable gardening programs and take advantage of the many education and life skill benefits it can provide.  The children can burn the CD, so that they have one at home as well as at school.  The CD-ROM is printable.

The CD-ROM product includes photos of every vegetable and herb, and information on what to plant when; how long before you can eat it; recipes which kids can cook, organic spraying, making compost, the Perfect Soil Recipe, nutritional facts, and  much more.  The PLANT-A-GEN!US is an excellent resource for kids, their health and any science related project.   The recipes can be incorporated into cooking projects, with maths helping out with weighing and measuring, and marketing - if the kids wants to sell the products to their parents and neighbours.

Photographing daily stages of the seedlings and creating booklets of the vegetables will help children's botanical skills, to say nothing of their visual and memory skills.

As a past Primary School teacher, I envisage great benefits when schools undertake projects including parents and their children to construct elevated garden beds. These elevated garden beds would be constructed at waist height for the average child, and also provide access for those who are wheelchair bound. Each would only take one man, one weekend to construct, and the plans for the elevated garden bed are available free of charge from our Hints & Recipes page.  There is bound to be a parent with a bobcat, and this would make the building of elevated garden beds really quick!   Most of the material can be found at recyclers; cliplock is best, but any corrugated iron, providing it is not rusty, is fine.  If it is, then painting with No Rust, and then another coat is all the needs to be done.

Elevated garden beds are good projects needing mathematical skills, which also promote good awareness of sustainability for kids by learning what needs to be purchased new, and what can actually be sourced from  the local tip shop or recycling centre.   

The Plant-A-Gen!us system allows children and teachers to go through the CD-ROM and find out what the kids wish to grow and eat, and order those seeds from either a local organic store or on-line through such sites as Eden Seeds, Seed Savers, The Lost Seeds or Diggers. These organic seeds can then be ordered for the whole year and filed into the Plant-A-Gen!us box. If every child in the school bought a packet of seeds [approx. cost $2.50] that would mean 30 different vegetables could be grown - all for just $2.50 each child!   

When planting the seeds at school, this can also be an opportunity for the kids to also acquire some lower cost seed for their own home gardens, as quite often there will be too many for just the schools gardens alone, so when it is time to thin them the children can take the thinnings home and plant them there.

When the vegetables are ready to pick, the opportunity is also available for the children to be able to sell them to their family, friends and neighbours, should they have grown enough, and this could help fund the next season of seeds and any material costs for their garden beds.

The school might even wish to conduct a vegetable stall once a week or so. So many win/win situations!

Other ideas to help encourage children and add some variety, are that the children could be encouraged to try taking photos of a particular vegetable of choice in weekly intervals until picking time, which can then be constructed into a growth album or flick booklet to watch the vegetables grow in front of their eyes.

For an extra challenge, the children may wish to plant the next years or seasons seeds without markers, and see if they can identify which vegetables are what from the photos they took of the last lot of vegetables they grew.

There are just so many opportunities for discovery, and avenues for good learning through vegetable garden and simple to follow and use processes and products such as ours.