Thomas Edison High School

The garden will be used to teach students how to grow their own food. After students grow their own food they will research recipes (or be given a recipe) that they will cook in class. We have a cooking class that focuses on how to cook good food to eat. The teacher teaches them how to cut food, different methods of cooking, and how to add nutritious ingredients that they might not think of to add nutrients to their diet. This year they have made homemade salsa with peppers and tomatoes from the garden. They made zucchini muffins from the garden with more zucchini recipes coming.
The garden will also teach them how to gain the highest yields. Students will also look at what nutrients make for the best mix of soil to get the best tasting vegetables. Students will use organic gardening practices, no pesticides or herbicides. Students will create compost that will be used to make better vegetables. They will look at the differences using scientific inquiry methods to determine what they want to learn and to talk about the outcome of the vegetables.
They will learn which bugs and plants to introduce into a garden system to keep unwanted critters and weeds out of the garden. They will look at how ecosystems work. We are very excited that we can now actually look at the entire carbon and nitrogen system in a contained system rather than just looking at a picture in a book. They can draw and analyze food webs in the system we are creating.
We will use our funds to add to our raised beds. We would like to build 4 new 4 x 8 raised beds. We will need to purchase compost to fill the beds. We would like to be able to grow food inside during the MN winter. We have lights, but would like to add a hydroponic component to grow veggies, herbs, and greens during the middle of winter. We have part of the funds from this from our neighborhood organization, but not all. We would also like to build a compost pile so we can make our own compost using a 1N:1C ratio.