A select group of six fourth graders at Russell Elementary School is getting the drop on how they’ll feed themselves and others in the future.
They’re students in the school’s Junior Master Gardener class, and their classwork – so to speak – can be seen in various places on the campus.
The class is taught by Dora Waite and features volunteers and guest speakers. There’s also a lot of hands-on work involved.
“Today we have a speaker, but most of the time we like to get everybody outside,” said volunteer Tonda Seyl, a master gardener. “We get our money through grants, through the Master Gardeners and sometimes outside sources. Super Sod recently donated a whole sheet of soil that we used to fill our raised beds.”
The focus is to teach kids to grow food, to eat healthy and also how to garden and when to grow plants, she said.
Right now the focus is on composting, she said.
“We’re going to teach the kids about worm composting where they can take their trash, like banana peels, home and feed it to their worms,” she said.
Worm composting is using worms to recycle food scraps and other organic material into a valuable soil amendment called vermicompost, or worm compost. Worms eat food scraps, which become compost as they pass through the worm’s body. Compost exits the worm through its tail end. Vermicompost, also known as worm castings or worm manure, enriches the soil and can be used as a high-grade natural, organic fertilizer.
“We have three raised vegetable beds, and the kids raised all the plants. The beds have soil and mulch, basically,” she said. “We have kale and broccoli and lettuce, which the kids harvested a couple of weeks ago.”
The students also work in a greenhouse, and in January they’ll start growing seeds, she said.
“The seeds are donated or bought with our grant funds,” she said, “and we have a compost bed that we bought with our grant funds.”
The class is normally about 12 students; this year enrollment is down because the school put in other afterschool programs.
Every week the class has a different speaker. The speaker on this occasion was Ginger Butts, who grows wheat on her property in Bleckley County.
There’s not a lot of produce to sell due to the small size of the garden, but they did sell kale smoothies and lettuce.
“A lot of these kids don’t know what a radish tastes like, but we do sell some,” Seyl said. “Last year we had an in-school sale and raised more than $100 just selling plants.”
Seyl said she has been doing gardening work at schools since 2010. Before volunteering at Russell, she was at Lake Joy Elementary.
Waite, a third grade teacher, said Seyl approached her and asked if she was interested in holding a class at Russell. She said yes and gathered a staff of five teachers to take the 10-day master gardener class through the county extension agency during the summer.
“We gear the classes by season as far as teaching them what to grow and when,” Waite said. “Right now with the cooler weather, we have them growing peas, kale and lettuce.”
The class has benefits for the students beyond growing and knowing about plants, the 14-year veteran said.
“What is really good about this is the students get to try foods they wouldn’t normally try. They’re very open. They’ll try it,” she said. “One of our other teachers, she’ll bring in pasta that she’s made at home and the kids will season it with herbs and spices we’ve grown here and eat pasta salad. Otherwise, they probably wouldn’t touch a pasta salad.”
The students love what they’re doing, she said. “Everything they’ve learned in science class they get to apply here.” And it goes beyond the classroom.
“They look at food differently when they go to the grocery store,” she said. “We even have them to where they ask their mom and dad, ’Hey, can we start a garden at home?’ Some use the raised beds and for others, if they don’t have the ground for that, we try to show them alternate methods such as a five-gallon bucket, a hay bale, or an ice cream bucket. We show them how to grow lettuce, radishes and spinach.”
Waite said they to maintain 12 in the class because they’ve found it is the right size for doing hands-on work.
It’s not just for students, either, Waite said.
“The program is great because it pulls community members in. We have master gardeners that come and volunteer; they have no children in the school. They’re just taking their love of gardening and volunteering with it. There are other community members who normally wouldn’t be involved with the school, but they volunteer,” she said.
In the class, Butts is lecturing. “… so y’all ate some yummy stuff that was good for you. That’s what I want to get from you: Healthy can be yummy. And if you want to be healthy, you need to eat real food. Whole wheat flour is good for you. Does anybody bake or want to bake? I’ve brought some flour with a recipe today that y’all can take home and bake some brownies with your mom or dad if you want to. (students oohed with anticipation) O.K., so let’s see who has the most wheat berries.”
Students call out, “I have 31. I have 49.”
“You see that some were more full than others? Now what is this called? That’s right, it’s a wheat stalk,” Butts said. “Now we can say that a wheat stalk has anywhere from 27 to 49 wheat berries on it, depending on how much sunshine it gets, how much care it gets. And you can mill the berries to get wheat flour and make tamales, you can make any recipe that calls for all-purpose flour. This would make a dense bread.”
Butts sells her flour and other mixes at the International Farmer’s Market in Warner Robins. She tells students she doesn’t have to go to many places for food.
“I get my meat at the farmer’s market, I get my produce at the farmer’s market, I get my milk at the farmer’s market, I get my cheese at the farmer’s market,” she said. “I really don’t have to go the grocery store. With the holidays coming, up we’re going to eat sweets, so you may as well use whole wheat flour to kind of offset the, you know, not eating good.”
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