SPEC School Gardens Program

One of our school gardens, at Brock Elementary School, had experienced much abuse over the years, and finally broke. One very awesome class decided to do something about it.  With SPEC's help sourcing repurposed (recycled) paints, brushes, and paint trays, they made some great signs to let everyone know what the garden meant to them.  This garden is now more colourful than ever before!  A very special thank you to Gaia Green Products Ltd. and West Coast Seeds for donating so much organic fertilizer and seeds to us over the years!!

By Amy Ing On March 2nd, I had the pleasure to present a hunger workshop to Ms. Taylor's 24 students, Grade 1 class. The purpose of this workshop was to engage students in learning about how hunger varies across the world, and ways as a class we can do to help solve world hunger. First, students were asked to describe what is hunger. Common responses were, 'when people do not have enough food and lack money to buy food' and 'when people do not eat in a day.' A student even described how hunger impacts the acidity in our stomach and how people may get sick from being hungry. Students also shared stories about their encounters with helping people suffering from hunger by donating food or giving them money. Next, students were split into four different groups representing four countries: Indonesia, Mexico, Canada and Morocco. Each student in the group had to locate where their representative country was located on the map. I was amazed how easy these students f...

On Monday, the kids from the Brock Junction daycare and I harvested a bunch of scarlet runner beans and bush beans for their snack. And boy, did they love them! The next day, a bunch of the kids came running up to me and asked if they could pick some more of the 'magic beans' to eat. Later, two of the girls asked if they could plant some bush beans in an empty section of one of the plots. I let them go ahead, but then later realized that they used up almost a whole package of seeds. There will likely be a forest of bush beans beginning to grow in the next few days. I'm sure the kids at Brock will be happy about this. Collecting bush beans at Brock Elementary  Planting more delicious beans! Spraying a homemade solution to kill powdery mildew 

In order to make room for new plants at Thunderbird, the kids and I harvested a bunch of arugula from one of the plots. At that point, it was still fairly small. I figured it was the perfect opportunity to make arugula pesto for the first time! To add more volume (and flavour) to the pesto, I also collected some carrot greens which would've been composted. Carrot greens are edible, and have a mild flavour; you will hardly notice a handful blended in to the pesto. Harvesting arugula at Thunderbird

Bees exploring a squash blossom. Those vibrant colours!

One of the best things about working with kids is watching them try new things. Especially healthy, new foods from the garden. Maybe their willingness to try new foods from the garden is so big because of the excitement of harvesting your own food. The joy and surprise when a child pulls a beet from the ground and yells "Look at this! It looks like a giant spider" is so great to watch. As we were thinning out the beet crop the other day, one of the kids asked what a beet tasted like; he had never tasted one before. I was shocked and amazed to find out that many of the other surrounding kids had also never tasted a beet. Without missing a beat (no pun intended) the kids asked if they could try tasting the raw beets. I warned them that raw beets had a pretty strong and earthy flavour and that they may not like them on their first try. Fortunately, they still went on to taste them, and surprisingly many of them really loved them. They loved the way it made their mouths bright re...

This week, this kids learned about pineapple weed! It's a wild, edible plant that can be found all around Vancouver; even growing from a crack in the pavement. It has a sweet and fruity smell and taste, and can be used fresh in salads or can be dried to make tea. The kids were so shocked that this sweet smelling weed was growing all around them and they had no idea! Learning about Pineapple weed  Look at that harvest!