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Friends Academy
n/a
Address:
1088 Tucker Rd.
Dartmouth, MA 2747
US
Telephone: (508)999-1356
Fax: (508)997-0117
Email: radleyandfinch@earthlink.net
Website: http://www.friendsacademy1810.org
The garden at Friends Academy was initiated in 2007 by faculty member Katherine Gaudet as a tribute to her parents, Jim and Emmie Roberts, who were both avid gardeners. The school garden has its roots in their memory.
The garden was conceived as a setting where children could experience the joys and challenges of gardening in a hands-on way and also learn about the nutritional and environmental consequences of food production. Students read soil tests, prepare compost, sow cover crops, set up protective row covers, harvest crops and take Brix readings. Students seed and/or transplant at least two different crops per bed during the outdoor growing season, which begins in March and ends sometime before our Winter Break in mid-December.
During the 2008-2009 school year the garden doubled its original size and now consists of ten growing beds, each a meter wide and fifty feet long. The garden measures 3630 sq. feet, or approximately one-twelfth of an acre. Thanks to a generous grant from the Baldwin Foundation, the garden gained a storage shed and an irrigation system plus an array of tools and other gardening necessities.
Special thanks also go out to our neighbor on Tucker Road, Derek Christianson, who is the owner of Brix Bounty Farm and coordinator of Roots Down - New Bedford and Know Your Vegetables www.brixbounty.blogspot.com. Derek has been an invaluable source of advice, equipment and materials. Every school garden should be so lucky to have such a generous and knowledgeable mentor.
The school garden follows the bio-intensive method of gardening, which advocates for the use of organic fertilizers -- primarily compost -- and which employs a strategy of close planting in defined beds. The leaves of mature plants touch their neighbors, producing a living mulch that blocks sunlight and minimizes weed growth. Close planting also maximizes garden space, and because plants are situated only in established beds, applications of compost and fertilizer are more efficiently targeted.
In addition to educating children about gardening, the garden has been a key piece of the Friends Academy service-learning program. Each year approximately sixty students work in the garden, either as members of a sixth grade health class or as participants in the fall and spring versions of our service learning classes, which consist of a double period on Friday mornings. Various children are also active in the garden during after-school and summer programs. Every Friday beginning in early April and continuing throughout the summer and fall, parent volunteers drive garden produce three miles to the Food Pantry at Grace Episcopal Church in New Bedford. The Food Pantry serves more than 200 households, a number that has been on the increase since the beginning of the long economic downturn.
Students completed the final harvest of the 2009 season on December 11th. Sixty-eight pounds of produce, mostly hardy greens like Swiss chard, kale and lettuce were sent to the Food pantry, lifting the yearly total to 2624 pounds. A ton and a quarter of produce might seem like a lot, but given the increasing number of families asking for assistance, there's a need for much more. That need plus our enchantment with the miracles wrought by soil and seeds continue to motivate us to improve the quantity and quality of our vegetables.
The 2010 gardening season began in mid-February, when as part of our Winterim program several students spent a day seeding 4500 onions plus 500 turnips and a couple hundred spinach in plastic trays. The first harvest of those onion seeds began some five and half months later, at the end of July. We had dozens of students volunteering throughout the summer months and their help is a significant continuation of their efforts during the school year.
We had our final harvest of 2010 on December 8th, a day before the nighttime temperatures dipped into the low twenties/high teens. This year we harvested 4497 pounds of fresh produce, 99% of which has been sent to the Grace Church Food Pantry. Two days before Thanksgiving, the entire school community enjoyed a delicious soup made from our garden vegetables and prepared by parent Aaron DeRego at his Westport restaurant, the Back Eddy.
This meal was a first and we hope it will become an annual event.
That year's harvest was almost a ton more than we delivered at the end of 2009. At 658 pounds, cucumbers were our biggest producer, followed by lettuce and Portuguese kale at 555 and 518 pounds respectively. Cabbage weighed in at 524 pounds, onions at 349 pounds and carrots at 324 pounds.
In mid-fall 2010, students planted some 2500 onion and 3200 carrot seeds directly into our growing beds. Ideally, each of these crops were harvest-ready in late May and early June, soon enough for kids to see the fruits of their labors.
Protective row covers and another mild November gave crops more time to mature. The flavor of the brassicas -- kale, collards, cauliflower and turnips -- were much improved by the first frost in mid-October and the progressively cooler night temperatures. We had Brix reading of 16 on our rutabaga leaves and a 12 on the rutabaga itself, which rates an "excellent" on the official Brix scale. Green kale registered a 12, another high reading. We are happy to achieve such high Brix numbers with these crops and hope to reach a similar level with all our produce, but we are not there yet. There is much we can do to improve and that's what the winter's for -- making plans for spring.
The 2011 growing season has yielded 3104 pounds so far, and more than 10,000 pounds over the last three years. We are now delivering produce to a food pantry and a soup kitchen in Pawtucket in addition to the food pantry in New Bedford.
Our plants have survived the recent Halloween weekend freeze relatively unscathed, mostly because at his point in the season only crops tolerant to cold weather remain. Row covers and plastic sheeting afford additional protection to the cold-hardy plants.
We are planning to host our second annual workshop in mid-March 2012 at Friends Academy for school garden facilitators. The workshop will address the needs of school gardens still in the beginning stages and the needs of established school gardens as well. More info will soon follow.
We welcome all visitors and volunteers. Please reach us at the contact e-mail address to ensure someone will be in the garden to greet you and show you around.
Steve Walach
