Anna Simmons, clearly taken with the tangy sorrel leaves students picked from the Congdon Park Elementary School garden Wednesday afternoon, stuck an extra leaf or two in the pocket of her raincoat.
“I’ve got my stash of those,” she said, producing the herb when asked what she thought of the taste.
Cindy Miller’s fifth-graders were harvesting onions and garlic, and checking out the class’s three sisters crops. The garden is part of a regional school garden bus tour held Saturday that includes stops at schools in Duluth, Two Harbors and Silver Bay. The Duluth Community Garden Program organized the tour to help increase food literacy and healthy eating among the K-12 population, said Jamie Zak, who works for the program.
“Across the country there is this huge, broad movement toward school gardens,” she said.
The Northland has a shorter growing season, but schools are able to work on horticultural projects in both the fall and spring, she said. The tour will give people a chance to trade tips and tricks related to cultivation and weaving gardening into classroom work. It also promotes ideas about food access, she said.
“Some families may find themselves in a position where they don’t have it,” Zak said. “To pick something off a deck or a small plat in a yard can benefit a diet tremendously.”
The garden at Congdon Park is filled with lettuce, kale, tomatoes, peas, beans, and carrots; and those are just some of the veggies that wind up served in the cafeteria. The school takes its gardening seriously. Classes last year -and again this year -sign up to pull harvest duty. The bounty goes to the kitchen and the staff prepares it for students. Each day a sign goes up in front of the offering from the garden. And they do eat it, said Madison Hoffman, 10. She prefers the beans.
The garden, which gets lots of help from parents and other community members, is surrounded by perennials, herbs and blueberry and huckleberry bushes. There are salsa beds for the school’s salsa days in the cafeteria. Certain classes are growing vegetables for projects, like Miller’s three sisters (beans, corn and squash) plot that will culminate in a dinner. The cafeteria manager does a monthly taste test in classrooms, and the school composts to make its own fertilizer.
“Having students learn that full circle, and being active stewards in their community; that’s the direction we are going,” said Renee Willemsen, a Congdon Park parent who does volunteer work for the garden.
At Myers-Wilkins Elementary, there are eight raised beds that hold vegetables, including corn, pumpkins, tomatillos and garlic. It, too, has three sisters and salsa beds. Various beds are cared for by afterschool programs, and maintained by teachers over the summer. Families take the produce home and some classrooms use the garden, said Jen Eddy, executive director of the Myers-Wilkins Community School Collaborative.
Students see there is more to it than just planting a seed; they learn the roles of bees for example, she said.
“Letting them be outside, to see the process from the beginning, it gives them a well-rounded education,” Eddy said.
Silver Bay’s K-12 school has what it calls a “fruit bowl.” Inside of its football field sits a ring of raspberries, strawberries, apple and plum trees and a terraced garden with 40 beds. Old bleachers had been removed for a smaller set, and what remained was ugly, said fifth-grade teacher Tom Frericks.
“I thought maybe we could make it look better and get some use at the same time,” he said of the gradual work to create the ring.
Two hundred feet each of the berries and 60 apple and plum trees were planted. More is planned for next year, he said. The school also has a greenhouse, a garden, and does worm-composting. It’s building an outdoor brick oven paid for by the Parent Teacher Student Organization for items like artisan pizza and bread. Toppings, of course, will be garden fresh, and school officials are hoping for a community education bread-baking class. The school sells its produce to the community, with profits going back to its gardening fund. Leftover produce goes to the cafeteria. Last year, 200 pounds of produce was served inside the small school.
Students love to eat raw vegetables out of the gardens, Frericks said, noting the entire K-12 school works in the “edible schoolyard.”
“The vegetables and fruits we grow in the gardens, the supermarkets can’t compare to that,” he said.
