Winter is a great time to start planning a vegetable garden ready for Spring planting, but if you already have the veggie garden ready, there are plenty of seeds that can be planted now. Broad beans for one. If you think you don’t like them, try growing them, and picking them when young. No need to ‘double peel’ them. They really are quite delicious.

However, this month’s Newsletter is going to focus on how working with your Primary school and our PLANT-A-GEN!US products for the Classroom, can really benefit the childrens education and healthy eating habbits.

Most schools would have an area that could have an elevated garden bed erected on it. Elevated beds, approximately one corrugated sheet high, give better drainage, weeds don’t grow as much, and there is less bending, making gardening more enjoyable. Disabled kids in wheelchairs can garden as well.

Ideally if parents got together with the kids, and build a garden, which might take 2 days, [using recycled materials], there would be joint pride in the project at little cost. The soil would have to be bought, and then improved with blood & bone, manure, vermiculite [to hold the water] and compost.

Deep watering, once or twice a week, first thing in the morning, is better for root systems. Set up a watering system, using little black plastic tubes tied on around the edge of the bed. Place sprays in strategic places, [see pic] attach the pipes to a hose, which is then attached to a tap. There could be a roster for the children to turn on and off the tap.

Planting seeds is a really fun thing for kids. In the first instance, the classes need to decide on what vegetables they would like to grow. A list of these can be drawn up and ordered, online, from an organic seed merchant such as Diggers. [First become a member of their Club!]

Once the seedlings appear, there will be far too many in the school vegetable garden, so there will be enough for each child to take home a few seedlings, which means a benefit to the family budget, ownership of the growing process, as well as eating something healthy.

Even before the school vegetable garden has been thinned, the teachers can encourage the children to make up a “My Garden Book” taking photos of each stage of the seedlings, researching ways of cooking the vegetables, and ultimately collecting the seeds for the next year’s planting.

Thought also needs to be given to adding shade cloth over the whole area, in order to keep out those pesky white cabbage moth/butterflies that think you planted members of the broccoli and cabbage families just for them. An old tennis racquet, placed nearby, gives children an opportunity to practice their serving whilst aiming at the moth!

Thought also needs to be given to building a compost heap that can be filled with excess peelings that come from children’s and teachers’ homes plus scraps from lunchboxes. Hair and coffee grounds are great for the compost heap. Ask the locals for these goods, thus reducing their waste, which will now go to a good cause.

A CD-ROM is available in the PLANT-A-GEN!US and shows pictures of all the vegetables and herbs one might like to grow. Included are recipes for organic spraying, making compost, companion planting, moon planting, handy hints, recipes, nutritional facts and how long each vegetable takes before you can pick it and eat it.

If children really get into growing their own, they can sell the excess to their neighbours, or take a stall at the local market. Or even sell to their parents! Think of the saving on petrol, tyres, maintenance, time etc. when one doesn’t have to shop all the time. This system gives them really fresh food, and they know that there have been no nasty chemicals used in producing it.

So, parents, what about it? Not difficult; the teachers would like to have a resource like this. 

The CD-ROM may be duplicated so that each child will have their own.

Please let me know if you are successful at getting your school to start a school veggie garden.