Read “Safety First” by Sarah Pounders and you can reassure your director and students’ parents that you are informed about how to avoid potential health hazards in eating food from a school garden. Did you guess that washing hands is one of the safety steps to take?
Sarah writes, “Grow it, know it, try it … love it! Educators and parents across the country are using this philosophy to get young gardeners hooked on fruits and vegetables.” Children in my classes take to gardening even when it’s a new experience. The crops that we can grow and harvest before the end of school include snap peas, chives, oregano and other herbs, and strawberries. In a small (1m x 3m) raised bed garden there is room for just a few plants, enough so every child gets a taste of what we grow.
Children seem to observe most closely when planting or watering. Some try hard to keep their clothes and shoes clean, sometimes because of personal preference and sometimes because of parental warnings. To keep it a positive experience, I try to help them limit the mess. Child-size tools can help them control where the dirt goes. How do you handle this in your garden?
Maintaining even a container garden requires a commitment to water and weed. Neglect is the main difficulty faced by the gardens at my schools (I’m not at each school every day). Gardens do best with some daily attention—not hours and hours but at least a few minutes to water when needed, look for “wildlife”, or tie a plant to a support. The rich environment of the school garden is under-used. Sometimes the peas children planted in a raised bed don’t grow taller than a few inches because children were allowed to climb up into and through the bed to look through the fence. Other times children are not made aware of the Cabbage White butterfly caterpillars chewing up collard leaves. Without adult encouragement to attend the garden, zinnia seedlings may dry up rather than sprout up.
I need some advice on how to enlist other teachers to help the children water at least a few times a week, and spend a few minutes talking about any changes. Or maybe I should be planting hardier plants!
Tell me what to try,
Peggy
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2 Comments
I like the idea of children taking turns being “chief gardener”. You are right Marie, the garden must belong to the teachers who are on-site the most. That arrangement has not yet occured but this year I stepped back so maybe next year someone will step up. We have moved to a new location with classrooms all at ground level and I’m hoping the ease of access will increase the use of the out-of-doors.
I wonder if the regular daily teachers would feel more invested in your school garden if they were involved in the original plant selection and planting. If they think of it as “our garden” instead of “the science teacher’s garden” they might be more motivated to build tending the plants into their daily routine. Do you have enough staff for a daily teacher to join you and the children when you are gardening? At my school the garden is the domain of my assistant teacher and I rarely work in it. But he is at school to regularly take care of it with the children. If he were there only once a week we’d have to coordinate the gardening activities. I’d ask him for a watering schedule and hints about what insects etc. to look out for. I might have the children take turns being chief gardener each day. Marie Faust Evitt Mountain View, CA