Organic Gardening February 1998

Garden to Garden Square Foot Gardening Goes to School

by Linda Wiggen Kraft

At Flynn Park Elementary School in University City, Missouri, the annual planting of the vegetable garden is a week-long rite of spring, in which all of the teachers and students participate. Before school lets out in June, everyone shares the harvest when a garden fresh salad is served for all in the school cafeteria.

As the parent-volunteer who organizes the project, it was my job to figure out how to get 400 children (kindergarten through fifth grade) outside so they could each quickly and easily plant their seeds. Thanks to my experience with the "square foot" gardening method, I devised a plan that allows each child to plant seeds in his or her own square foot of space, and we can plant the entire garden in just four days. Our vegetable garden is laid out so that each of the 20 classrooms is allotted a 3 by 8 foot plot, or 24 square feet of total garden space. And since each class has about 20 students, each child can plant at least 1 square foot.

After we decided on the layout, our next challenge was to devise a way that a group of 20 children could come outside for 30 minutes to an hour, get their seeds planted (without trampling the garden), stay interested in what they were doing, learn something and have fun too. Another parent-volunteer and I came up with the 10 cool-weather crops that the children could plant directly in our cool Zone 6 ground in mid to late March, and that would mature in time to harvest before school lets out in June: beets, carrots, kohlrabi, lettuce, mustard greens, peas, radishes, spinach, Swiss chard, and turnip greens.

For each vegetable, I prepared a laminated information sheet that included a color photo, what the seeds looks like, why we should eat the vegetable, how to plant the seeds, how many plants grow in a square foot, and how to harvest the plant. Several weeks prior to planting, each teacher is given a set of these sheets.

In mid-March we begin planting. Each classroom signs up for a 1 hour slot to come outside. We set up a chair for an adult volunteer in a grassy area across from the garden along with some blankets for the children. When the students arrive for their planting session, a volunteer explains what we will grow and reads stories about gardens. The first year, the favorite book was City Green by Dyanne DiSalvo-Ryan, a story about an inner-city community garden. (Our school garden is used as a community garden during the summer by different families from the school.) The second year the favorite book was Oliver's Vegetables by Vivian French , a story about a boy who learns to like different vegetables after spending a week with his grandparents. While one volunteer reads and talks with the group, other volunteers take children individually into the garden to help them plant their seeds.

One of our biggest challenges was to use the square foot method, but not spend all day measuring out the precise location for each plant. My solution was square foot garden templates: cardboard cut into 12 inch squares with four, nine or sixteen evenly spaced holes. The templates are labeled with the names of the vegetables that go with each spacing. (For example: the template with four holes is for lettuce or mustard greens, and the one with sixteen holes is for carrots.) Each garden volunteer received a tote bucket with the laminated templates, small zipper-type bags containing opened seed packets with the seeds dumped into the bag (easier for little finger to handle), indelible marking pens and plastic markers.

Volunteers and children work on both sides of a bed at the same time. The volunteer places the appropriate template for the vegetable the student is planting on the ground. Then the student pokes his or her pointer finger through each hole into the dirt, and places two or three seeds in each hole. When all the seeds are in place, they remove the template, cover the holes and place a marker in the middle of the square so that everyone else knows not to plant there. When the student is done planting he or she returns to the group, and the next student takes a turn. In practically no time, all the students have planted their seeds, have heard a story, and participated in discussion about the garden.

Throughout the spring, the teachers take their students outside periodically to check the garden’s progress, and to help the volunteers water and weed. During the last week of school, the classes come outside, several at time, to harvest the vegetables. The students then clean the vegetables and prepare a large salad with the help of the parent-volunteers. At lunch, the cafeteria serves the salad, many students love it so much they come back for seconds!

Linda Wiggen Kraft

St. Louis, Missouri