Setting up gardening club at school

lickylonglips

Hi! I am a teacher in a primary school and am interested in setting up a gardening club for the children. We are aiming to gain "healthy schools" status and are involved in a project with our link schools in Germany and Ireland focussed on healthy eating and living.

I would like your ideas on what would be the best (edible) things to grow, please. They will need to be planted / sown between now and Easter if possible and not take too long to be ready for "harvesting".

I will be working with 15-20 children and have been given £1000 to spend on equipment and other necessities (seeds, bulbs, compost, etc.) Any suggestions as to what to spend the money on?

Any help would be greatly appreciated! As you can probably tell, gardening is not my field at all (I'm a languages specialist), but am doing this because of my involvement with the German link.

Thank you in advance!

lickylonglips

Rosabella

Hi, I'm a teacher in a primary school too, and I run the eco-schools group. We've done a fair bit of gardening as part of this - I'd love £1000 as a budget!!

These things have been really popular for us:
blueberries in containers
alpine strawberries
cherry tomatoes - all these 3 can be picked and shared pretty much staright off the plant!

Carrots - you can get these in a range of colours! We have grown these in an allotment bed or in big containers.
Green (french or runner) beans would also be very good as they grow fast so you can see fast results, then they are easy to harvest.

In terms of equipment, it really depends on the space you have. We have a tiny playground and did have a part of an allotment for a while. We used spades and forks - you can get some really nice 'Joseph Bentley apprentice' range in a really large child size - or ask parents for donations? We use a lot of containers for growing and a parent made most of ours out of recycled wood. Our latest project is fundraising for a wormery to top up our composting - this should cope with the fruit peelings and give us a quick turnover of waste to compost.

Hope that helps - sorry if I've gone on too long!!

lickylonglips

We have plenty of space... we're a huge primary with nearly 800 kids!!! thanks for the suggestions! it's given me something to think about over the weekend!!!!

lickylonglips

the composting idea sounds fab! i hadn't even contemplated that! all those leftover manky carrots and satsuma skins from the infant fruit!!!

gsysezz

A company called Rock Gardens helps gardening in schools

http://www.rocketgardens.co.uk/dig-for-their-future.asp

Hope this helps you both!!

rubberdubber

definatly invest in a wormery, our local primary school has the wormcity wormery one and the kids love handling the worms.

they have also made raised beds to grow some fruit and veggies in.

LJM

at our school we hedged off an area at the top of the field which is very big and have a mini allotment their complete with compost bins, we grow a variety of veg and also our gardening club takes care of our flower beds taking part from the beginning to the end result. this has resulted in us winning the pan in bloom contest for best school garden. it is so worth it just to see the kids get in there, get dirty and thouroughly enjoy themselves in the process, i personally think them getting involved is an important part of thier education

Mariamne

Hello, I advise our local school's Gardening Club and it's quite tricky trying to get crops that the children can sow and harvest by July. So many vegetables peak during the summer holidays, very inconvenient! Also, anything in pots needs attention and watering during summer, so we try to avoid these, and keep it simple. Anyway, bit of an essay follows but our successes include:

1. Early potatoes followed by pumpkins.
Plant tubers (early varieties only) in late March, harvest in early July.
Meanwhile, in April, sow pumpkin seeds in pots inside. Plant out after potatoes harvested. Pumpkins should have roots well-established by summer hols so won't need watering if soil is decent, and will sprawl and keep down weeds.
Harvest pumpkins before autumn half-term.

2. Early carrots followed by squash.
Sow Early Nantes carrots when soil has warmed a little in March. Harvest early July.
In April, sow squash seeds inside and proceed as for pumpkins above (we are doing Butternut, Red Kuri and Blue Ballet).

3. Salad Bar.
In March, sow lettuce, rocket, spinach, chervil, red mustard or any of the mixed leaf seed selections - anything hardy and leafy that can harvested as 'cut and come again' salad. You could also grow radish (so quick and easy) and spring onion.

4. Early peas.
Children love fresh peas so we do loads of these. You could also try mange-tout and sugarsnap peas. Sow in March and harvest by early July.

5. Perennial Herb Bed.
A permanent planting of rosemary, thyme, french tarragon, sorrel, oregano, bay, sage, chives, fennel, garlic chives and marjoram. Rhubarb also lives here. Be careful with mint because it is invasive - sink a pot in the ground to try to contain it. We encourage parents to pick the herbs to use in cooking.

6. Raspberries.
We grow Autumn Bliss so the children can pick the fruits after the summer holidays. Easy to care for but they are invasive and need their own bed! The bed can be edged with alpine strawberries, which for some reason the birds don't steal...

We also grow cherry tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, chillies, runner beans and courgettes. These are started in pots and taken home by the children (with growing instructions) to enjoy during summer.

It's hard to know how to spend your budget without knowing what soil you have. If the soil is poor, you may need to spend most of your budget improving it.

We bought seeds, herb plants, seed compost, pots, tools, kneeling pads, trugs (for weeding), watering cans and gloves. Also, a small plastic covered greenhouse, compost bins and a water butt.

We also found you need clearly defined paths to stop children trampling the beds - and are now opting for timber-edged raised beds.

Hope you enjoy it - children have a natural affinity with gardening and as said before, they LOVE worms!!

Oh, and also, all that KS1 fruit/veg leftover stuff is great for compost but for every couple of bucketloads add a bag of shredded paper or you end up with stinky slime!!! Good luck.

kippers

There is loads of info on the RHS site for schools...not just info about what to plant but info about the plants to tell the children etc to make it more like a science project.

moo2moo

Potatoes grow well in old tyres.

Nag your school caretaker into helping (or parents) that way you can build raised beds and planting containers from scrap timber very cheaply. Hanging baskets liven up the outside of the building and can be used for tomatoes and strawberries as well as flowers. Most importantly have a plan in place for the school hols. One of my many responsibilites (as school caretaker) is to water the plants in the greenhouse and the hanging baskets during holidays as well as feeding the wormary.

Sainsburys vouchers can be used for gardening equipment too.

mambury

Hey OP... guess what....
I've been 'conned' into doing the same thing!!!
Except.... they want a wildlife pond, a sensory garden, a veg plot, pollytunnel.....

I shall be popping back in for advice and ideas!!

Mambury