BAA supports the BICS Edible Garden and its Grow to the Market Program, which allows students to grow their own produce at school, then sell it at the BowFEAST monthly community farmers’ markets. Here’s an Edible Garden update from Sarah Haxby, Bowen Island Community School Coordinator.
The Bowen Island Community School (BICS) Edible Garden is a hive of activity with the start of the Grow to the Market Program (year two) and the new Farm to School Program! Daphne Fargher is helping to run the Grow to the Market program again, and Rina Freed and Pam Matthews are part of the team helping helping to facilitate classroom and garden activities and the Farm to School program. Plans are in the works for every class to visit a local farm or garden in May, our community partners are busy getting ready, and school and classroom garden activities are now weekly! Contact Sarah Haxby, Community School Coordinator if you would like to get involved!
Excerpt from the BICS Garden Diary:
April 2, Twenty-one K-grade 1 students plant Snap, Cascadia and Sugar Ann peas. It was warm the week before, but it was lightly smattering very cold rain. Students’ enthusiasm not dampened.
Two beds were prepared by transplanting surviving winter kale, mache, swiss chard and volunteer forget-me-nots into pots. Much weeding occurred. New organic vegetable compost added to the beds.
Every student planted at least 10 peas. Each had their own row to dig, plant, add compost and bone meal. Students marked rows with their names, and the type of peas planted.
Over 200 peas planted. Goal: to provide peas for the class to eat, as well as to provide peas to the Friday lunch program to add as raw veggie snacks.
Next jobs for the class: building the frames for the peas to grow up out of a recycled volley ball net and wood.
Wed. April 4, Grade 5/6 students had the opportunity to work in the garden. Activities: dig out half of bed 4,top up bed 5, empty remainder of the big green composter into bottom of bed 4. Add 2 leaf mulch bags and pumpkin bag-compost experiment from Halloween carving. Cover with bedding soil. (Bed 5 was bottom-composted in 2011, Bed 4 in 2012.) Sensory report: compost often looks worse than it smells. Curriculum connection: Romans may have been the first to systematically compost!
Study/look closely at: baby burdock plants –leaves and roots and the speed of the worms in the leaf mulch. Tasting: cabbage sprouts
Weeding of bed 1 and 3 partially completed. Transplant/potting-up rescue volunteer forget me nots , & raspberry runners for Grow to the Market Sale as well as transplanting sunflower seedlings. Some students took forget-me-nots home with them.
Next jobs: get ready for the first time students have participated in the Garden Club’s Annual plant sale on May 12. BICS Grow to the Market students will have a table selling seedlings and subdivided garden starter-sized plants at the sale! —Sarah Haxby, Bowen Island Community School Coordinator
