Getting Started with a School Garden

General Fruit Growing
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Hello everyone,

I’m a high school English teacher in Northern Jersey who has finally gotten a gardening club approved after much delay. I do not consider myself an expert on any of this by any means, but I know how to read, so that puts me ahead of a lot of people. I have set up an extensive Google Classroom that links to many resources that I have spent the past few years digging through. Of course, 95% of the kids won’t read any of that, but it is there for the one or two that will. I thank everyone on this forum for helping me build that guide, as your personal experiences with fruit and vegetable varieties have helped me select varieties that may do well in a home garden around here as well as the school garden I am now tasked with.

There have been a couple of posts of other members who have started a similar endeavor, but I wanted to ask some other questions.

For anyone who has set up a similar type of garden, what resources did you use to get started?
What problems did you face that you would like to warn me about?
Where were you successful in getting free stuff?
How did you manage fundraisers, and were there any that were particularly successful?

I am starting with 0 budget, like all things school related, but I have a lot of spare supplies and a municpal with free mulch/ compost. I had to set out a tiered plan with different options depending on budget, as well as a plan for expansion.

The bare minimum this year is- no in-ground planting, just seed starting and plant sale. Fall would be a Mum sale and a propagated plant sale to make a budget for the following year.

If allowed access to school grounds, I would help students make 3 garden plans for admin review. This year would likely be in-ground planting, with 1-2 raised beds made of free/ recycled material. I have some spare trellis material. Usually, watering is not much of an issue since it rains so much here, but I have some students, another staff member, and myself who would water if needed.

For accessibility reasons, I would need to make a high raised bed next year so that students in wheelchairs or with coordination issues would be able to access the garden and participate. Those birdies beds are like $500, Does anyone have alternatives that would please “Shareholder aesthetics”?

I am also helping a fellow teacher plant trees on arbor day, and I was wondering if some of my 890 grafts would be appropriate for a fruit tree that she wants. Does anyone have pictures of a free-standing G890? I can’t seem to find any good examples. I will also be giving away some of my potted trees ( which my wife will be thankful for) and other grafts for this cause. These would be the same lower maintenance varieties I have in my backyard orchard (Liberty, Freedom, Pristine, Black Oxford, Sundace, Crunch a bunch etc)

Any other suggestions or tips would be appreciated.

I will be posting progress pics for anyone who is also looking for some guidance so you can know what I did.

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In Canada, local watershed districts will offer resources and funds towards projects such as these.

There are also numerous sources of municipal, provincial, and federal funds when it comes to schools establishing gardens or food forests.

Does your state or county have a master gardeners club? In Canada there are provincial master gardener clubs, made up of individuals who will happily assist our local communities with activities such as these. In fact, annual hours towards community assistance in gardening is one of the requirements to maintain the “master gardener” title.

I imagine the US has similar offerings between the numerous conservation districts and extension offices. The youth and health of our environment is directly tied to our future, afterall.

Our local watershed district offers tens of thousands of dollars annually towards our rural initiatives to create pollinator gardens & food forests, as well as educate the youth and local community about the environment. Being quite agriculturally based, the community members also come together, donating items such as composted manure, lumber, and most importantly time.

I applaud the efforts you are taking to educate the youth, and highlight the reality of what it takes to create what we as a society consume.

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There is a charity in NYC called ‘Edible Schoolyard nyc’. They do fund raisers with restaurants, each restaurant will choose an item on their menu, or even maybe create a new menu item, either way it’s an item that they’d like to see sell/sell better, all profits from the one item for a limited time would go to ‘Edible Schoolyard nyc’, lots of people who like ‘Edible Schoolyard nyc’ go and try the item, which makes the item more well known. So everyone benefits from the promotion.

It does take some time to get enough recognition for people to want to help, if ‘Edible Schoolyard nyc’ wasn’t so well known they may have not gotten help from the restaurants, and they may have not gotten any Bonnie brand plants donated to them. It also would help if this garden club were to do something beyond teaching kids to Garden, like the food grown by ‘Edible Schoolyard nyc’ goes to feeding hungry children. That is one of the main reasons that they get donations, and help.

I helped to get ‘Edible Schoolyard nyc’ a total of over 200 cuttings of figs/cuttings of pomegranates, most were donations because people loved the idea of helping to feed children with things they love to eat themselves.

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Stock tanks work well, and they’ll probably last a lot longer than those birdies beds. You can either drill holes in the bottom for drainage or cut the bottom out completely with a heavy duty pair of tin snips. They are also easily painted if your students want to decorate them.

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I work with cooperative extension, so I’ve worked with school and school gardens before, as well as lead my own fall kids gardening program. Here is what I’ve experienced.

Resources
My employer has resources (https://jmgkids.us/) for elementary students and some resources for middle school students, but not for high school students (we’ve requested, told to use the Master Gardener educational stuff). I have their giant garden activity book which I pull activities from every year. You should be able to get the books used though, maybe off ebay, and there are free gardening activities on other websites.

One thing I looked at for a while was this-https://www.mnla.biz/page/hscurriculum
Also look here: https://www.seedyourfuture.org/educators

Money Resources- I’m not sure in your state, but my state’s Farm Bureau has garden grants.
There is also this: Youth Garden Grant 2024 - KidsGardening

I’d recommend you contact your local cooperative extension office ( Cooperative Extension County Offices (Rutgers NJAES) ) or local Master Gardener group.

Problems
If you build a raised bed out of concrete blocks, the kids will climb on them. This is assured.

When I did a spring gardening kids program, a problem that I ran into was that the vegetables would be ready in the summer, when school was out. I switched to fall, but that meant that the kids were only planting short season vegetables, like radishes (a MUST, so easy to grow, here at least), lettuce, turnips (kids don’t like turnips), beets, and swiss chard. I’ve tried starting longer season vegetables in the summer, like sweet corn, tomatoes and peppers, but then it’s me gardening, not the kids.
They sure do like picking though. That seems to be their favorite activity.

To get the kids to pull weeds, I’ve had to make it into a contest (who can have the biggest pile of weeds). With raised beds you shouldn’t have that problem right away.

You will need to teach the kids how to plant seeds. If you give an elementary student a bunch of seeds, they will either dump them all in one spot or fling them into the air. Usually when your back is turned helping another kid.

I have had parents sign kids up for my program because they want the kids to eat more vegetables, not because the kid is interested in gardening. You are doing a gardening club, so hopefully you won’t have this problem as much.

I wish someone had told me this, or keeps telling me this because I keep forgetting, but test out your activities or experiments ahead of time. I have had some interesting failures, with the kids watching.

Clearly label where things are planted. I’ve had kids trample things before.

I’m not sure if the kids should plant things together as a group, or get their own section. I’ve done it so that everyone plants everything together, so it’s not “That’s my turnip” or “That’s my tomato plant”. I might be switching to giving a kid their own area to plant, because I’m hoping they might care more. That’ s the problem I’m running into now. The kids I have had these past few years just want to pick, and the few kids that do want to learn are usually the less rowdy ones, and I find that I’m more on damage control/”don’t mess with that” rather than helping the kids that want to be there actually learn how to garden (as a teacher, if you have any tips about that, I would great appreciate it.)

Giving the kids a bunch of PVC pipe pieces and telling them they had to build a water line from one bucket to another and that I would be measuring the amount of water they leaked, was actually a very successful and fun activity. When one team finished piping it to a bucket, they then built the pipeline to the garden and watered the garden that way.

I haven’t had to do fundraisers because I charge kids a base fee for my program. I have had to pay for some stuff out of pocket.

I second @belowtheterrace . Those metal stock tanks would make easy raised beds.

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I have checked for federal funding, which is problematic at the moment for the sake of “government efficiency” and there are some grants I may be able to apply for. My school is actually pretty wealthy, but has basically no funding for clubs like this so it makes it hard to get grants from what I am told. Someone got a grant a few years ago for their attempt at a horticulture tie in and even got a greenhouse. Appearently, a student ran the greenhouse with their car within two weeks of it being put up… the guy gave up on his project after that and has provided me with no help because he wouldn’t get money from it.

I will look into the master gardener program. My previous home owner was a master gardener who set up our towns community garden, and she planted fishwort in my lawn so it must not be that hard.

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The restaurant donation seems like a good idea. I talked to some of the sports team coaches and they said that they do something similar. They have a company sell popcorn or something and the proceeds go to the team. There is also a few nurseries that may be able to help us out in this way.

As far as giving back, that is in the plans down the line. When we have expanded enough, excess food would aid food drives and the gardens could be accessed for special education programs like sensory gardens or educational workshops. We are trying to set up a culinary department at the school, since our fully equipped kitchen has sat empty for years. Students could give fresh herbs and vegetables to the class. We also could donate some sales to charity once we have enough set up.

Thank you for directing me to the edible NYC, they have a lot of free resources that are useful.

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The city of New York helps to fund Edible Schoolyard nyc’s program some, just as long as they do what they are expected to do. Feed children, and teach them to cook/grow their own organic food. In NYC the feeding people charities help each other out. As I am sure you could imagine, they wound up with way more fig trees and pomegranate bushes than they needed, so other feeding people charities got a lot of the plants too, similar charities got some of them, two different sets of community gardens got some of them, a farm that sells organic food at reduced prices got some of them, and so on. If it were not for covid preventing the kids from attending the schools then there would have been no room to root all the cuttings, and to care for them until they found new homes/were ready to go out doors. Now they would not be able to do what they did back then, no matter who the gardener(s) are.

‘Edible Schoolyard nyc’ has what you could call classroom greenhouses. Do more with less space.

There is also ‘Katie’s Krops’, I sent them fig trees/fig cuttings. Although them being a countrywide charity, they don’t have as much an ability to take as much plants/cuttings. They manage to get a lot of ‘Federal grant money’, and grants from other sources, like grants from farmers. https://katieskrops.com/

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Thank you for the detailed response!

I am in contact with rutgers, and will be doing some work next year since their master gardener program is closed this year.

Focusing on the problems, I belive this year we may either only start seeds or start seeds and plant in ground. Raised beds would be cool, but flat ground planting is basically free and just as viable. I’ll probably end up with a couple of beds if they give us some land to work with, just for accessibility and perhaps for crop protection.

The kids may also be able to tend it over the summer, since there is supervision with sports teams over the summer almost daily. I live locally too, ao I can supervise when needed. I actually have some kids who were excited to tend a plot, aince they don’t have access to one at home or in the community. There are some really good kids in, which should help me greatly.

I will have a seed starting party within a week, even though it is a bit late, to show kids how to soil block and how to make recyxled paper pots. One of the goals of the club is to teach sustainable agriculture methods and low waste lifestyles. The kids will start mostly tomatoes, greens, groundcherry, and sunflowers because that is what I have and what can grow to a good size in 6 weeks for a sale.

I have done all this stuff myself for a few years now, so I dont think anything will be a big fail. The biggest problem would be if we have a bunch of leftover plants with nobody to buy them or take them.

It is interesting to think about dividing the space. I really had not considered each kid being responsible for a garden space. I figured it would be communal. It really depends on how much space I am given I guess.

As far as behavioral management goes, busy work always helps. Environmental control is difficult in a garden, but you might be able to have a designated “play” area like a sandbox or something. Punishment works, but parents are a pain with that, so kicking out the knuckleheads is rarely a good choice. With little ones, I think the rule is they can focus on a task for about as many minutes as they are years old. Mature ones you can double. Immature, well… if there is no play area, you can designate a play time instead, so take a break and play every so often

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