Chapter 8
How to Make Your School Taste Good

School grounds are usually pretty boring. Boring concrete, cement poles and grass…

This is because schools usually don’t have much money and all the money they do have they spend on books, teachers or classrooms so you can get an education, which is why schools are there in the first place.

If you want to make your school grounds more interesting (and good to eat) you’ll probably have to do it yourself. A good school is one you can eat!

How???

Step 1.

Convince your teachers this is a good idea. I don’t know how you’ll do this – you’ll know your teachers better than I do.

But even if your teacher seems like an old grouch, remember that teachers are there because they want kids to learn things and be more accomplished adults when they grow up.

Teachers are often fed up because no one seems to want to learn anything. But if you show you are interested in something – even in making your school taste good – the chances are they’ll be incredibly happy to help you with your project. (They’ll think, ‘Oh wow, here’s a kid who actually wants to do something!’)

Step 2.

Choose what you’re going to grow. But remember:

• Don’t plant more than you can water.
• Don’t plant anything where someone is going to run into it and squash it. (In other words, if it’s at the corner of the playground you may have to put up a fence – even if it’s just stretching string around the plant to remind people not to run into the garden.)
• Don’t plant anything that’s going to fruit in the school holidays – like tomatoes, peaches, plums or apricots – there won’t be anyone around to pick them, the fruit will go to waste and there’ll be a gooey mess on the ground.

Step 3.

Get hold of some stuff to plant.

Most plants cost money so:

• See if everyone will bring in $2 to buy plants.
• Ask the P & C if they’ll donate money to buy plants.
• Put a note in the school newsletter saying you’re going to have a ‘bring a plant day’ and ask parents to donate a plant. (Make a list of ones you’d like them to donate and tell them that if they donate ten you’ll make a special plaque saying ‘These trees were donated by…’)
• Ask your teacher and parents if you can all go on a doorknock to ask for money to buy plants for the school.
• Write letters to your local state member of parliament asking if they can raise some money for plants for your school.
• Grow the plants yourself. Any fruit has seeds (except for bananas). If you plant the seeds you get fruit…

See Chapter Seven for easy, cheap ways of getting plants you can eat.

Where can we plant things at school?

UP POSTS AND ALONG VERANDAHS

I hate seeing naked posts. As long as they get some sunlight and there’s some soil around them and the rain can get to them to water the plants (forget about posts under the school) plant something!

Plant passionfruit; or grapes (but you do get lots of bees with grapes, and bees can sting you); or chokoes; or kiwi fruit (you need a male and female next to each other or you won’t get fruit).

Remember to water and feed the plants and then eat the fruit.

Okay, yes, I know – what do you do when there are 150 kids at the school and only one passionfruit vine? Plant 100 passionfruit vines and then everyone can have some!!

(Imagine waiting to go into class and stuffing yourself with passionfruit…)

ALONG FENCES

Grow passionfruit or grapes or kiwi fruit along fences.

If the fences are tall brick fences, stretch some wire up them (the person who looks after the grounds will show you how to do that) and grow something up the wire (it’ll be a heck of a lot better looking than bricks).

THE OVAL

Forget about football – fruit is much more fun! Dig up the oval and plant strawberries or lots of plum trees. (I’m only joking – I wrote that because my son is reading this over my shoulder and I wanted to hear him howl with rage.)

THOSE HORRIBLE CONCRETE AND ASPHALT STRETCHES

All schools have great big slabs of concrete, but you can make them into a place to grow fruit. You can get pots – big pots or tubs and grow all kinds of fruit to eat. See Chapter Six for information on growing plants in tubs and pots.

Otherwise you can break up some of the concrete (no, you won’t be able to – the school would have to hire someone with a jackhammer which would be fun to watch) and plant a few trees.

If all else fails, see if the P & C will agree to build a pergola over part of the concrete, even just wire stretched between buildings will work. Then you can grow climbing things along the wire and the concrete and asphalt underneath will be green and shaded.

If your school is hot in summer and cold in winter, you need deciduous trees and vines – ones that are cool and green and leafy in summer and lose their leaves in winter so you get more warmth and sunlight when you need it.

Grapes are a great deciduous climber and so are kiwi fruit. Have a look at some of the plants in the next Chapter too.

VEGIE GARDENS

Most vegie gardens are a lot of work. You already do a lot of work at school, so you probably don’t want to do more.

Above-ground gardens (see the box on the facing page) are cheat’s vegie gardens. They are very easy as long as you do them the right way.

Above-ground gardens

You need: lawn clippings or leaves; newspaper; a hose; seedlings or seeds; Dynamic Lifter; potting mix and/or soil.

Step 1. Every kid has to collect a garbage bag of lawn clippings or autumn leaves. If you live in a flat you have to bring a pile of old newspapers.

Step 2. Lay the newspapers on the ground and cover with the lawn clippings or old leaves so they don’t blow away.

Step 3. Cover the leaves or lawn clippings with compost or potting mix – about five fingers deep.

Step 4. Plant your seedlings. Try:

• Coloured chard – like silver beet but with incredible coloured stems. Plant spring to midsummer. (If you plant one plant for every person in the school, everyone can have a bunch to take home once a week or fortnight.)
• Beans. Plant spring to midsummer.
• Carrots and radishes – sweet and crunchy straight from the soil.
• Snow peas – another good crop to eat uncooked, straight from the vine. They crop more heavily than ordinary peas.
• Forget about tomatoes – they have fruit in the school holidays!

Step 5. Every week sprinkle on some Dynamic Lifter. Water it in well.

Step 6. Water the bed every two days.

Step 7. Put some snail pellets in an ice-cream container. (Eat the ice cream first.) Cut four doors in the sides so the snails and slugs can get in, and tape down the lid so dogs can’t eat the pellets. (Snails love above-ground gardens and will eat your plants.)

Step 8. If you start getting weeds, mulch with more dead lawn clippings to kill the weeds.

Step 9. Eat the crop!

PLAYGROUNDS

Playgrounds need trees. Trees give shade in summer and help cool the school down when it feels like there’s a volcano breathing down your neck.

Trees also feel good to lean against. You always feel more secure when you eat your lunch next to a tree. (Maybe this is a memory from thousands of years ago – if a sabre-toothed tiger chased us we could climb a tree.)

Trees in playgrounds:

• Don’t need much looking after.
• Don’t fruit in school holidays.
• Don’t make too much of a mess on the ground.
• Don’t fall over easily or drop off branches.
• Have to be tough.

What should a good school look like?

There should be grapes and passionfruit and chokoes crawling up every post.

There should be kiwi fruit twining around all the verandah posts.

There should be lots of shade trees to have your lunch under and if you peer up into the branches you should be able to see something to eat (even if it isn’t ripe yet).

Okay, just shut your eyes.

Imagine what your school would be like if passionfruit grew all along the verandah. If grapes grew on every fence. If there were 100 fruit trees so you could pick fresh fruit for lunch every day. If every time you were bored in class you could look out the window and dream of what you were going to eat next.

If you could actually watch a plant change from a seed to a seedling, to a tree or a vine and then begin to flower and fruit.

Right – now decide. Is this worth having a go at? And if it is – go for it.