- May 5, 2024
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Swiss chard is just one of more than a dozen items grown in the garden at Bunnell Elementary School. Fifth grade gardeners Hannah Williams and Whitney Cremeans said this is the name of the one vegetable they can never remember.
“I always got the Swiss down, but never the chard,” Williams said while in between garden tours Friday, May 27, at the school.
The gardens, which house a cabbage patch, soup garden, pizza garden and herb garden, are used in Cathie Zanella’s nutrition classes to teach kids about healty eating and where their food comes from.
The gardens are a partnership with the University of Florida Extension Office, started by Krista Busey and Cathy Fischer 10 years ago.
“These women are so amazing,” Zanella said. “Their knowledge base and their ability to teach and reach the people they touch is intangible.”
Because of funding cuts, next school year the extension office will no longer be involved in the gardens, and Zanella will be taking over.
“It’s been such a good experience for me to watch this,” Zanella said.
This year, students have learned how to build garden boxes, how to appropriately put fill in the boxes to prevent weeds, and mix the soil and compost to make it a healthy environment for growing. They also learned how to plant seeds, seedlings, weed and feed, in addition to learning the parts of the plants.
“It was really eye-opening that (the students) would be interested in doing that,” Zanella added. “You think that it would be so boring for them, but it’s not. They can’t wait to come out here.”
Not only are students learning how to garden correctly, but they are also learning that vegetables taste good.
“They’ve eaten stuff I never would have touched as a kid,” Zanella said. “It’s so funny to hear a fifth-grader or sixth-grader saying that they want to pick this raw vegetable up and eat it.”
That vegetable for Williams and Cremeans is a cherry tomato.
“I never liked tomatoes,” Cremeans said. “But I will eat these.”
Through the work in the garden, the students said they learned the importance of eating healthy in addition to the cost.
“Even with a few little seeds you can start a garden like we have,” Williams said. “You can’t get a lot at McDonalds for $5, to feed your whole family of five people. And $5 worth of a garden can feed five family members really cheap.”
