Man in Overalls

You want to teach kids where their food comes from because if kids grow it, they'll be more likely to eat it, and since you hope to improve kids diets, offer a little exposure to the natural world and provide outdoor, hands-on, STEM learning experiences, or simply, you want child to have an opportunity to care for something and learn responsibility.

So you want to start a school garden.

I understand. School gardens can be beautiful opportunities for schools to engage kids, parents, and community partners in a collective effort that spills over into all manner of benefit for kids, the school, and the community as a whole.

Regrettably, I've seen lots of school gardens grow into weedy plots that are ultimately reclaimed by turf grass. This is often the case in spite of inspiring community build days where 10, 20, 30 even 50 people come out to get a school garden started. I hear similar stories from Kristi Hatakka, Farm to School Garden Specialist with the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services (FDACS). (They've got great resources by the way, including the School Garden Guide that I wrote back in 2013, which they updated last year.)

So you want to start a school garden. And you want it to succeed and continue growing into the future.

Basically there are two routes that lead to thriving school gardens: 1)Find the money, or 2)Build your team. Or, more simply: money or people.

In terms of money, it's rare but-- who knows-- maybe your school has extra cash on hand for a "beatification project," or maybe you're a fundraising genius and serve on the PTO board. With money in hand, you can hire someone like to me design, build, handle weekly maintenance, provide educational support to teachers, and otherwise facilitate your school garden. Sometimes, the money is in the hands of a local nonprofit that has a mission aligned with school gardening. Kristi with FDACS says that some of the most successful school gardens around the state have "a very active nonprofit or entity that maintains or works with a very active parent or two." This is a great model because teachers -- more often than not-- are simply stretched too thin to make it happen without a lot of external support. Exemplary school garden related nonprofits around the state include: The Edible Peace Patch Project (in Pinellas), Memory Trees (Palm Beach), Miami Dade Education Fund, Keep Tampa Beautiful, Damayan Garden Project (Tallahassee).

But then, maybe you don't have money; there's no school garden nonprofit around; the nonprofits that do that sort of thing aren't taking on new projects, or they are only offering minimal materials grants or garden-build volunteers. That's not enough, so what do you do?

You build a school garden team: teachers, parents, kids, community partners, grandpa Jones, anyone... so long as they have some related interest.

When I help build school garden teams, I use an ABCD or asset based community development approach. In essence, this is the idea that everyone has assets to bring to the table, or more simply, everyone has something to offer. Everyone has things they know (skills, ideas, knowledge), things they have (time, tools, money, materials), and connections to other people and groups, which have assets of their own. This is the philosophy I take with me as I start talking with people about the idea of a school garden.

The flip side of the ABCD coin is that everyone has a dream. Unless there is an exchange, a sense that people are in someway getting something they want (out of participating), any sharing of their assets and participation or support of a school garden is going to be short lived. If you're going to effectively rally & sustain a school garden team, you need to think like the below community garden partner map developed by the American Community Gardening Association. What does the school garden get? And what does the school garden team member get? It's got to go both ways.

With this in mind, let me stop while I'm ahead before I end up re-writing the entire School Garden Guide I developed with FDACS. The guide will take you step by step through how to build a school garden team.

[As an aside, if you're looking for inspiring school & youth garden leaders here in NE Florida, you ought to know about Success Gardening's work at First Coast High School, Urban Geoponics's New Town Urban Farm, YMCA's Seed Differently program, the Eastside Environmental Council's school garden projects, I'm a Star Foundation's youth farm dream, and I hear there are many more. If you know of any impressive school or youth gardening efforts, please tell me, so I can keep learning.]

Let me close by offering you a magical question, one that has helped me build more teams and groups than I can count. When I'm trying to tease out whether someone might be interested in joining an effort or to see if they might be willing to offer some sort of support-- and to do so without putting them or guard and to provide them with an easy way out in case they aren't actually interested but don't want to disappoint me, I lead in with "So I was talking with so-and-so about the idea of starting a school garden here at _________. They said...." and then I ask, "Who else do you know who might be interested in the idea of a school garden?"

Happy Growing.

Why Can I Eat Bread in France, but not the USA?

Updated 10/31/2017 as the National Organic Standards Board meets in Jacksonville, FL. This may well be the most important thing you read this year for your health. (Originally written in 2015 while I was traveling-- and eating bread-- with my wife in France.) I've got a food riddle for you from Paris, France: Why can I eat bread over here when it makes me sick at home? I'll share my best guess in a minute, but first, a little personal background. Since my senior year of high school, I've not been able to eat much bread at all. For five years, I was severely hypoglycemic, and everything I ate had to have more protein than carbohydrates. That meant, in effect, that I spent my years of college beer-less and eating lots of salad with meat on top. I ate tons of vegetables, very little fruit, basically no carbohydrates to speak of, meat, nuts, eggs, and cheese. If I accidentally ate, say, meat loaf that was, unbeknownst to me, made with bread in it, I'd spend the n...

Man in Overalls - It's Like Washing Your Dishes

I often hear folks joke, "Yeah, I had a garden once. I put in all this money & effort, and I only got a handful of tomatoes. Each one of them cost $27!" And they usually end by saying something about not having a green thumb. My first tomatoes of the season I smile and think about a mental model I've been working on: Growing your groceries is like washing your dishes. While they're raving about how many plants they've killed, I'm thinking, "It's not your thumbs. I bet you don't have a sink. And if you do, are you using decent soap or that garbage from the dollar store? And did you mention you've never washed dishes before in your life? And you're surprised you broke a couple wine glasses with no more experience than a four-year-old?" My eyebrows furrow involuntarily belying my thoughts, "Really? That doesn't seem all that surprising to me." But, of course, not only would saying all that confuse people, it...

Man in Overalls - The Valley of Food & Ag Startups: Warren Wilson College

If you're interested in tech, pay attention to Silicon Valley. If you're interested in food and agriculture, Swannnoa Valley, more specifically Warren Wilson College , is the place to keep on your radar. Man in Overalls with (L to R) Mary Elizabeth, my wife and Rachel (Williamson) Perry, WW alum and herbal tea entrepreneuer I'm an alum and proud of it, class of 2008. I studied community organizing, wrote a 140 page thesis about social movements as my capstone. Nathan, as college Freshman on WW Electric Crew. (Look for the blue water bottle) It's a work college, one of seven in the country. Think universal work-study, so in addition to whatever one's academic track, students are also working in the cafeteria, the library, admissions, as carpenters, lock smiths, lab techs, and-- per the agricultural legacy of Warren Wilson-- as row crop, animal, and vegetable farmers, gardeners, and edible landscapers. Personally, I worked on the electric crew a...

Man in Overalls - Growing Great Soil

Good soil will basically grow your groceries for you, but how do you build great soil? The answer is that there are two options: a quick & easy way and a DIY, hard(er) way. So we're on the same page, I'm continuing my #GrowYourGroceries The Easy Way series by digging into the how-tos of growing great soil. These stories and techniques will likely make the most sense after reading Geeking on Good Soil , my last update. (I outlined where I was headed in The Big Picture.) As I was saying, the easy way to build a great soil is to fill raised beds with a terrific compost-based soil mix like my Magic Mix to jump start your food garden productivity from year one. From there, seasonally, you simply top-dress each season before planting with another few inches of compost-based soil mix. This is how I manage my own food garden and those of my customers. Why? Because at the root of things, I'm a lazy food gar...

Man In Overalls - My Compost System

Composting, they say, is an art form. But, truth be told, I'm just too lazy for all that. My own compost philosophy is, "Crap rots in the woods, doesn't it?" But really. :) Whenever I think of home gardening systems, I always reflect back on my grandmother. She gardened up until the week she died at 93. She planted by the signs and assured me that's why her collards were not eaten up by bugs and were able to grow for 3 years running and up to 8 or 9 feet tall. She had a little rototiller, planted straight rows, mulched by spreading leaves to keep the weeds down. She threw out a little 10-10-10 from time to time and kept the cabbage worms at bay with Sevin dust. She hoed if the weeds called for it. But mostly, she harvested. Her pots were always full and her freezer always stuffed with produce: collards, mustards, turnips, peas, tomato gravy, squash, you name it. Now, I don't use 10-10-10 or sevin dust, and I'm not big on tilling. However, the thi...

Man in Overalls - Summer Garden Blues & What To Do

Welcome to mid summer in the Deep South! If you're anything like me, you're actively looking for excuses to avoid going outside this time of year. The heat doesn't so much radiate down from the sun as it seems to rise from the side walk. Rain helps- for about ten minutes- and then simply adds to the humidity as it vaporizes on the payment, so that it feels like you need a snorkel to make it from the house to the car, but of course, it only gets worse when you turn on the AC, and that first puff of hot air feels as though someone just wrapped your face in a plastic bag - not to mention that if you cut your grass yesterday, you're going to have to do it again... tomorrow. And, lets not even talk about how fast the weeds grow this time of year! Or the insects seem to multiply! Oh, home... :) Here's the good news: If your garden looks a little worse for wear, it's okay. Really. Mine does too. As much as I aim for- and largely achieve- a productive & beauti...

Man in Overalls - How to Start a School Garden: Design

Before you get to build your school garden like this, before you can help kids get their hands dirty like this, or teach kids in your school garden like this, there are a few things you've got to take care of first. The #1 most important thing you've got to do is build your team. I say- with no exaggeration-- that human infrastructure is THE most important aspect of developing a successful school garden. But, I already wrote about building your school garden team last time. Assuming you're on track with that, a simultaneous step is to begin developing your school garden design. Here are a few things to should consider as you develop a school garden design: Purpose In your school garden interest meeting, one of the first questions you should ask is: "Why are you interested in a school garden?" Interestingly, this question serves two purposes. First, it helps the team gel because there will likely be a lot of overlap in answers. This will ...

Man in Overalls - When to Plant Tomatoes

" Plant 'em in the spring. Eat 'em the summer. All winter without 'em's a culinary bummer ," as John Denver sings in "Home Grown Tomatoes." So, just when should you plant* your homegrown tomatoes? Or, more generally, when should you plant your spring food garden? (For an abbreviated version of this post revised & published in Edible Northeast Florida, click here. ) Since tomatoes along with other spring favorites like squash, corn, green beans, cucumbers, peppers, and the like are "frost sensitive" (in other words, they'll die if it freezes), it's all about the "last frost date" for your area. Unless you're a weather savant and remember the last freeze for the past twenty years, you'll have to do some investigating. You could look up your Plant Hardiness Zone on this cool "interactive" map from the USDA, and you'd learn that Jacksonville is in zone 9a, Tallahassee is in 8b, and At...

Man in Overalls - An Ode to Collards (Now with my recipes)

I love growing my groceries in the fall - watching the miracle of growth, having ready-access to the freshest produce money-can't buy, the many flavors, getting to try new varieties - all while the temperature drops to more and more pleasant levels. I enjoy growing most anything in the fall, but, if I had to choose just one thing to grow every fall for the rest of my life, it would be collard greens, hands down. It's a health thing and an effort-to-yield calculation, but in the beginning, the roots of my collard green passion were seeded by family. When I was a kid about 9 or 10, just a couple years into gardening in the front yard , my aunt, the family documentarian showed me a clipping of my late grandfather from the Graceville New (or was it the Jackson County Times?) beneath his 9ft collard greens that he had kept alive multiple years, growing them into small trees. Not to be outdone, my grandmother grew a collard forest of her own. Seizing the moment, my...

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Man in Overalls - How to Start a School Garden: Build a Team

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