Planning Your Garden around the School Calendar

Dr. Leigh Whittinghill, Assistant Professor of Urban Agriculture

The first two steps in planning your school garden are finding a good (or as good as possible) location on site and determining how you will grow your crops. Crops can be raised in ground, in raised beds, or in containers. After that, you must decide what to grow.

When selecting crops to grow in your school garden, you should do or consider the following:

• Work from an existing curriculum, such as the Junior Master Gardener curriculum
• Plan around a garden theme, such as a salsa, pizza or ABC garden. For more information on planning a salsa garden, check out our fact sheet Making a Salsa Garden (KYSU-CEP-FAC-0018), available at https://www.kysu.edu/documents/college-of-agriculture-communities-the-sciences/salsagarden_2019.pdf
• Showcase crops commonly found in the grocery store
• Showcase crops or varieties not commonly found in the grocery store
• Talk with other programs and teachers
• Are there crops that fit with cultures or languages being taught?
• Are there crops that fit with periods of history or literature being taught?
• What crops might be useful in cooking, nutrition, or other Family and Consumer Sciences classes?
• Check in with art and science teachers as well to see how they may be interested in using the garden space with their curricula

Once you have some ideas about what crops you would like to grow, you should make a plan or calendar for planting and harvesting activities. For some help with this, check out our fact sheet Developing a Crop Planting Calendar (KYSU-CEP-FAC-0078), available at https://www.kysu.edu/documents/school-of-agriculture-communities-and-the-environment/planting_calendar_with_tables_accessible_031021.pdf. School gardens do, however, have an added challenge of having to contend with the school calendar. Students are around in the spring and fall to help with garden activities but are