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 working with gardening in their school, and comes complete with 4 divisions for each season of the year, as well as a CD-ROM full of additional information and media. Schools can use this together with the more advanced Plant-A-Genda product for their teachers and senior students, to provide vegetable gardening programs and take advantage of the many education and life skill benefits it can provide.

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. Making for an excellent resource for kids and their health and science related projects.

As a past Primary School teacher, I envisage great benefits for schools undertaking projects such as the school coming together with parents and their children to construct elevated garden beds. These elevated garden beds would be configured at waist height for the average child, and also provide access for those who are wheelchair bound. They would only take a weekend to construct, and the plans for the elevated garden bed are available free of charge from our Hints & Recipes page.

The elevated garden bed is also a good project in that is promotes good application of mathematical skills in the assembly of it, and also promotes good awareness of sustainability for kids from learning what needs to be purchased new, and what can actually be sourced from other sources such as the local tip shop or recycling centre.

The Plant-A-Gen!us system can be customised for various children and families as well, with children and parents able to go through the CD-ROM and find out what the kids will wish to grow and eat, and order those seeds from either the local store or on-line through such sites as Eden Seeds, Seed Savers, or Diggers. The seeds can then be allocated their slots for the whole year and filed into the Plant-A-Gen!us box. The price for doing this generally doesn't cost a child/family any more than $2.50 a year.

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.