Question #1: What Is Your Summer Maintenance Plan?
(e.g. weekly schedule, watering Wednesdays, weedy weekends …)
Volunteer recruitment
- Promoting through school newsletter and parenting center
- Knocking the doors –making personal connections
- Providing gardening skills training/education sessions to volunteers
- Addressing the needs of volunteers – community volunteers enjoy the gardening experience and networking opportunity
Communication and commitment
- Online calendar to inform school food garden project (SFGP) committee members informed about weekly schedules and duties
- Regular meetings with volunteers
- Garden training/education sessions to volunteers who do not have the gardening knowledge and skills (e.g. identifying the differences between weed and plant)
- Involving care takers
Partnership with Day Care Center
- Shared ownership allows a sustainable partnership
- Involving partners in planning and implementing summer maintenance
Parent volunteers
- Families involved in “Gardening Club”
Community members
- Senior Program
- Summer Camp Program
- Local church
Secondary school students
- Volunteer hours
- Summer job opportunities to youth
Postsecondary school students
- University/college students (e.g. Environmental Science)
Students with special needs (e.g. Surrey Place, Geneva Centre, Toronto Association for Community Living)
Other
- Fall/Winter maintenance
Mulching (TDSB provides free mulching service)
Question #2: How have you recruited/retained parent/community volunteers/participation?
Celebratory Events:
- Weekend “Community Festival” complete with music, face painting, food, planting in the garden
- Heritage dinner/Community dinner with food from harvest
- Rewarding students/staff with “pins” and having a bulletin board display recognizing achievements of those who have worked hard and contributed in the garden
Parent Participation:
- School Food Garden weekly school newsletter insert reminding/asking parents to come help in the garden during a specified time
- Scheduling the “Garden Club” after school so parents who pick up their children can take part with their children
- Inviting parents to the classroom to see what their kids are learning re: school food gardens
- Parent “growing club” during lunch
Community Volunteers:
- Community Center Partnerships
o Grow seeds for the community center garden and in turn, community center cares for school food garden during the summer months
- Nearby Daycare’s and Early Years Centers looking after garden during summer months
- Going door to door and informing community members about the School Food Gardens
- High school students accumulate community hours for looking after garden
- Students writing thank you letters/pictures/harvest/seeds to external funding partners/community volunteers to show their appreciation for their help
Media:
- Contact local newspaper/television to generate awareness of school food gardens
- School newsletter “School Food Garden” inserts
- Creating a booklet/pamphlet “map” of the community and school food gardens to distribute to community members
Question # 3: Has your school linked with the garden with the curriculum? If so, how? (e.g. what resources do you use? …)
Science
- Worm composting = worm empathy (grd 3)
- Living classroom
- Biology – secondary
- Grd 6 biodiversity
- Environmental studies, grd 11
- Ecology grd 7
- Weather
- Medicinal purposes of plants
- Garden journal
Math
- Planting garlic: 1 clove = whole bulb
- Multiplication: plant one seed and see how man you get
- Calculating waste for composting purposes.
- Geometry
- Raised beds = volume and perimeter
- Recipes
- Area perimeter/coordinates
- Measuring sunflower growth, keep the seeds and plant them again.
Art
- Decorate the space – eco art
- Life drawing
- Paper making, flower pressing, book covers
- Van Gogh sunflowers, painting
- photography
Social Studies
- Food/nutrition
- Culture, eating habits in different cultures
- Global warming
- The great exchange – potato
- Pioneer garden/native garden/3 sisters
- Global trading/spice road/explorers – grd 4,6
Language Arts
-
Garden journalsReading comprehension
- Writing
- Oral language
- Recipe writing
Phys Ed
- Physical activity
- Mulching, weeding, shovelling, building containers
Life Skills
- Conflict solving
- Respect
- Working together/stewardship
- Trying food around the world
- Following a recipe
Music
- start every gardening session with singing to plants
Health/Wellness
- Cooking skills i.e. green smoothies
- Stone soup story
ESL
- Many kids grew up in rural settings – are already gardening experts
- Teach horticulture vocab
- Social aspect of working together
- Learning about Canadian flora and trying new produce
- Envn’t education
- Understanding the food chain/source
Geography
- Maps of food origins
Special Needs
- Culinary arts – cooking, shopping, gardening
Other
- Character building
- Gardens are important and link to curriculum is secondary
- Helps teachers who are timid with gardening
- Need for more curriculum resources that are easily accessible and organized by grade and subject.
Question #4: What are your plans with the food that you grow?
- Food goes to the breakfast program, Stone Soup Program, Foods and Nutrition classes use the produce, daycare in the summertime and extra produce to parents of the daycare, students cook with preschoolers.
- Parks & Recreation will freeze produce from garden, lunch program.
- S.T.O.P. Community Centre, food banks.
- Chutney (fundraising).
- Green Smoothies (fundraiser: banana, juice and a green vegetable like spinach or kale-green leafy part only)
- Plant vegetables that will be harvested in the fall like sweet potato.
- Plant sorrel(tangy green perennial that you can harvest now)
- Cook in classrooms- pesto parties, bean dip, mint tea, callaloo.
- Seed saving in the fall-dry them and put them in envelopes
- Zucchini and pumpkin flowers can be put in salads or cooked in tempura batter.
- Snack and Breakfast programs.
- Farmers Markets (could school have a booth) or create their own market at the school.
- Bank of Montreal supports Young Entrepreneur Program.
- Day in School to promote their produce from the garden.
- Send some produce from the garden to local Councillor in your area to raise awareness of your garden and potential future support.
- Staff and students use herbs for team girl’s group made lasagne.
- Grade 4&5 recipe- students grow produce for that recipe.
- SK harvested sunflower seeds in the fall & will grow it in a couple of weeks.
- Resource: Program called Real Food for Real Kids provides fresh organic foods to schools. Remember that there is an interaction with our plants and that we are all connected
Question #5: What is your most pressing garden issue this year?
Composting
- Getting permission from TDSB, getting buy-in from caretakers
- Possible solutions:
o Just do it – don’t ask/wait, when done properly, composting is not an issue
o Develop good relationship with caretaker
Wildlife
- Racoons, slugs
- Possible solutions:
o Physical barriers such as fences/wires
o Planting certain plants as barriers (i.e.) zucchini and cucumber have prickly leaves, may deter pests
Vandalism/fear of vandalism
- Possible solutions include:
o Artwork – especially using names of children/classes to make the garden more personal (i.e.) could use cedar shingles and markers to identify names, weather resistant
o Maintaining the garden, not leaving it too “abandoned” during the summer
Watering during summer months
Need more help with garden basics
- Garden design
- Companion planting
- Getting actual garden in
Money
- Fundraising issues at schools
- Possible solutions:
o Always try to look and ask for money, services, or goods from local businesses (i.e.) local landscape artists, local garden stores
o Could sell produce back to community, teachers, parents (i.e.) herbs
o Look for grants from TFSS (Toronto Foundation for Student Success)
Getting volunteer support
- Volunteers are required for key roles not just some help here and there
- This is especially difficult when the school is not a “neighbourhood school” (i.e.) children are bused in, families live far from actual school – limits their involvement in school activities
- Possible solutions:
o Online calendar to sign up for duties
o Utilizing nearby daycare for summer maintenance
o Organizing volunteers for community hours requirement for students
Having garden utilized by all classes
- Need to ensure that all classes (whole school) is involved in some way in the garden and not just the coordinating teacher’s class
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