Hello, plant lovers of this wonderful #Hivegarden community!🌱 I wish everyone a happy and beautiful day!
I am so happy to finally be able to share my first garden story in this community. Today, I'll be sharing how I and my students transformed the barren backyard of our classroom into a Garden full of healthy and vigorous vegetable plants (with some spices and herbs) that comes with important informations about them- which for us, was a very fulfilling accomplishment.
My heart is full of joy every time I look at our garden because I know that it's not just the right materials (soil, fertilizer, and more) and the proper care a garden must have, but also our devotion, passion, sweat and hardworking hands are what made this productive and fruitful garden into a realization.
A School in a Garden rather than A Garden In the School
Under the National Greening Program of the Department of Education, the implementation of the Gulayan sa Paaralan, or School garden has never been a burden nor a pressure to me (teaching loads+paperworks+this?), instead, this Project has given me the best opportunity and motivation to bring and show my love of gardening to my workplace without sacrificing much of my teaching hours in school. It's like having a little play in between my work.
But why, Garden on top of Academics?
The Gulayan sa paaralan / School Gardens is not just for mere planting of vegetables and fruits but it has huge meaningful goals which aim to address the malnutrition of the students through school feeding (we believe that a full tummy can perform well in school), inculcate in students the love and values of gardening, good nutrition, and good health, educate students on the health benefits of each vegetable produce, the knowledge and application of organic gardening and lastly instill in their hearts the care for others, the care for plants and the cooperation among them, thus it is A school in a garden.
The Challenge.
One of the biggest challenges we encounter is the land space where to have our garden. We almost don't have a space in the school so finding fertile land/area is close to impossible. I roamed around and checked which area could I utilize to have our garden and the barren backyard of my room is the only choice I got.
The area is shady because of the trees that surround it and the land is very dry too so I decided to go for containerized gardening. In this way, I could easily fill in the containers with the best soil plus they are space efficient so I could plant more varieties of vegetables and I could transfer them to an open area for sunlight exposure if needed.
The soil preparation.
Since most of the grounds in the school were a playground, we couldn't find any fertile and loamy soil so we did was look for any fertile soil and composted leaves outside the school premise, brought bags of animal manure from home, took some sawdust from woodcutters somewhere and a little amount of charcoal soil. I am not a pro of this nor do I have the knowledge about the right amount of these materials to mix, I just followed my experience on how we prepare our garden at home and I think is effective and healthy for plants.
When we had everything we need, we mixed the soil ingredients and fill in our containers. During the process, the students were asking if the quality of the soil really matters and that couldn't we settle for what's available. I answered them that preparing the soil for planting is like a relationship, for the relationship to grow and be strong one has to strengthen its foundation and base same goes for planting. We need healthy soil for the plants to grow strong and healthy. They laughed, but I know they were learning.
It's Planting time.
Due to the availability of the seedling, we weren't able to plant the vegetables at the same time. Every week we were adding a variety of vegetables to our garden. Some were fresh from my student's house, others I bought in the market, and some also were grown in the school.
Of the limited space we have, could you believe it we planted about 24 varieties of vegetables, spices, and herbs in our garden! Each variety of plants has 10 to 15 stems/pieces. When these vegetables yield fruits and are ready for harvest, it's more than enough to make a big pot of vegetable soup good for 40 students in every cooking session.
Yeaayyy road to a healthy body and good nutrition!
A little tour to our healthy and pretty garden!
With the integration of landscaping and the Wow effect, I welcome you to our humble and beautiful Garden.
Welcome to our Garden!
As a way of educating the students who will enter our garden, I have provided signage of what the name of the vegetable is(our mother tongue and english word), the scientific name,the nutrients and the health benefits it give.
Our hydroponics lettuce of which I use a bamboo pole for it, spring onions and carrots!
Sweet potato and Kangkong planted on a sacks and Pepper of different varieties.
And the house of the Bitter gourds and Cucumbers planted in pink pots.
The harvest!
True to the Filipino proverb "Kung may itinanim, may aanihin", which means if you plant, you will have something to harvest in the future. We already are enjoying the rewards of our hard work and effort.
Time flies so fast and now we already harvested some of our vegetables such as; okra, spring onion, Kamote Tops,lettuce, pepper and Spinach.
We also conducted our school feeding not just in my class advisory but we were also able to share it with other students in the different class sections. Moreover, we were able to raise a little fund for our classroom beautification.
The students were enjoying our vegetables soup!
I couldn't be more thankful and grateful for the life we created in our garden. It's so satisfying and fulfilling. I know for myself that my love for gardening was always in my heart(insert my childhood days selling okra to the neighborhood), and now that I have one in school, there will be no more boring breaks and stressful days.
That's it for our Garden story. Thank you so much for reading. See you in my next Garden journals. I wish you all safe and well always.
Don't forget to smile often! and here's mine.
😊😀😍
Warm smiles from @callmesmile.