Garden will help promote healthy eating, stewardship

An "edible garden" has been planted at Leland School with a goal of having fresh vegetables for students in the fall.

Students in Lisa Shink's upper elementary class put the finishing touches on the garden last week.

UPPER ELEMENTARY students of Lisa Shink place straw
over landscape tarp last week adjacent the Leland School
edible garden. Pumpkin vines from the garden will be
trained to grow in that direction and the earth beneath
will be converted from grass to garden next year.

The garden, which is located on the east side of the school, is being grown as part of an educational initiative organized through Michigan State University Extension. The initiative – Cultivating Healthy Food and Families: A Schoolyard Garden Initiative – is designed to utilize gardening to promote healthy eating habits, physical activity and environmental stewardship.

“We want kids to learn not only gardening, but nutrition,” said volunteer Richard Allen. “We plan to grow mostly veggies that will still be going strong in the fall when the kids return to school. Then we will pick veggies and take them into the school to cook — stir fries, soups and pumpkin pies.”

The garden includes potatoes, tomatoes, tomatillos, carrots, onions, kale, chard and pumpkin.

Plenty of work was needed before the plants went into the ground.

“A first-year garden is a challenging transition from grass to garden, plus we had some very poor soil conditions — three inches of topsoil on top of basically old parking lot — very compacted, gravely subsoil,” Allen said.

ROWS OF carrots, potatoes, tomatoes, kale, onions,
tomatillos and chard are separated by straw in the
edible garden, which by the time school resumes in
September, will be producing vegetables for school
consumption.

Students began the process by removing the sod from planting beds, turning over turf and shaking out the dirt. They salvaged about a cubic yard of black topsoil that was being removed from a neighbor’s yard. A sifting screen was set up and students screened out all of the roots, rocks and grass.

“They loved the worms,” Allen said.

The sifted topsoil was added to the beds along with composted chicken manure. Then a broadfor was used to loosen the soil in the beds to about 10 inches deep. Landscape fabric was placed on the grass between the beds and around the garden perimeter and it was covered with straw, which will smother the grass and make an expansion of the garden easier next year.

The goal is to use non-synthetic chemicals, pesticides, herbicides or fertilizers, and to compost by using the largest amount of organic matter the school generates (food scraps, grass clippings and leaves) to build rich, productive soil.

Over the summer, the beds will be tended by students at the Leelanau Children’s Center, 4-H Kids Club and the extension’s mentor program.

Similar gardens are in the works at the Benodjehn Center on the Grand Traverse Band Reservation, Glen Lake Community Schools, Leelanau Montessori at Suttons Bay School, and the Leelanau Children’s Center-Northport.