INTRODUCTION
Overview

Education was a topic that was continually being raised at meetings of the Organic Producers Council of NSW and the ACT (OPC). "How do we get information about organic growing and organic produce out to the people who need it?" was the question that was always being asked. We are still asking this question fifteen years later.

We suggested that one thing we could try was to run a small pilot program at our local primary school in Gundaroo, NSW. The aim was to set up a vegetable garden and base some science lessons around it. The project was to be fully documented as a case study and presented to the OPC so that other people would be able to modify and use it in their area of NSW or the ACT.

In most schools the teachers are extremely busy and setting up a garden for students often becomes the domain of interested parents. It can be daunting for a parent to take this sort of thing on and it is hoped that this document will provide both the stimulus to initiate such a project and some ideas that will be of help to both parents and teachers.

Many schools already have small gardens which are not utilised at all as a teaching medium. Sustainable/organic vegetable growing fits perfectly into the curriculum of NSW primary schools. Horticulture is a multi-disciplinary subject and in the descriptions of the lessons you will be able to see that a great number of the science curriculum requirements have been satisfied. Topics include soil science, plant biology, worms, insects, map making and surveying, chemistry, design, building construction and even economics.

Gundaroo Public School garden in 1916

It is hoped that after a number of different people have trialed this type of gardening project, in different geographical areas, that this document will be modified, improved and made available to as many primary school teachers as possible.

This report summarises the course that was run at Gundaroo Public School with the combined years 4,5,6 science class during 1992. We had full support from both the headmistress and the science teacher and were allocated ten one hour sessions with the children plus a small plot of land. It was important that the children were able to see the plants through from sowing to harvest. In many schools only summer vegetables are grown. This is not appropriate because the plants need a lot of care during the summer holidays. All the crops that we chose were easy to grow, grew and were harvested during the school year and were very different from each other:

peas and strawberries - for the children to eat
lettuces - for the children to take home as a present
flowers - to beautify the school garden beds
wheat and garlic - to turn into corn dollies and braids respectively
              for selling at a school fete