Growing Fruit and Vegetables in a large school garden utilized by the school food service

Collaborators: Glen Roberts, ANR agent, Terry Bertram, ANR assistant, Danny Adams, KSU Small Farm Assistant, Justin Horton, FFA Adviser/VoAg instructor, Kathryn Tucker, School Food Service Director, Master Gardeners, VoAg and FCS students. Situation:  Today`s youth are unaware how their food is grown.  School cafeterias struggle to provide fresh nutritious, affordable locally grown vegetables for their food service.  The ANR agent approached a school board member and the superintendent about beginning a school garden harvested in the fall.  They and the school food service director were receptive of the idea.  The ANR agent, Small Farm Assistant, and VoAg instructor teamed up to grow and harvest the first 1/2 garden and supply the produce to the school food service to be used in the cafeterias.  It was very successful and has now completed 11 seasons and grown to a 4 acre garden.  The garden is in walking distance for the students to be able to harvest and help with the fruit and vegetable production that occurs after school begins in the fall semester. The ANR agent has 50 years experience growing and marketing produce.  That experience helped him to be able to grow the transplants needed and how to schedule planting in the field for the produce to be ready for harvest when the students return from summer vacation.  The students harvest the produce and it is delivered to the 5 school cafeterias to be utilized there.  The school food service workers and the ANR agent and his assistant communicate face to face and on email about what produce is available to use including date and quantity. This year they grew grape tomatoes, slicing tomatoes, cucumbers, cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, eggplant, cantaloupe, watermelons, sweet corn, Brussels Sprouts, and peppers.  This year we added a weed barrier between melon rows that decreased weed competition and increased yields and quality.  We also grew one acre of pumpkins supplying over 1500 five pound pumpkins to pre-school through fifth grade students. Several of the students decorated their pumpkins as their favorite book character and entered them at the local Fall Festival.  The Vocational Agriculture students helped harvest the pumpkins and deliver them to a grassy lot near the schools for the students to select their very own pumpkin.    They also gave more than a total of 3,000 pumpkins to the local Head Start, Immanuel Church Academy, Otter Creek Academy and several more churches and community organizations.   The value of the produce harvested and used by the school food service was over $18,000 with another $9,000 worth of pumpkins given to students and many civic and church organizations. We also gave more than $1,000 worth of surplus produce to a local soup kitchen and the local detention center.  COVID-19 restrictions made it difficult to do our traditional Farm to School celebration.  We opted instead to do a garden tour and picnic at the garden making a special effort to invited students of our students who work in the garden.  The tour consisted of several stops where students told those on the tour important facts about each vegetable grown in the garden.  It was a very special event for students, parents, food service workers, teachers and community supporters to get the whole picture of what the school garden is all about.