Vegetable Project

We lost a friend recently who we were just getting to know. Darby Penney, who lived a stone’s throw from our garden at Albany High School, passed away on Oct. 11. She learned of the Vegetable Project through Facebook, made a couple of financial contributions, bought seeds in one of our fundraisers and wrote some copy about particular vegetables Continue reading →

School gardening is the easiest shorthand for what the Vegetable Project is about. But make no mistake about the importance of gently nudging kids to get their hands dirty. Indeed, we might argue that the tactile experience in as simple an act as stirring water and potting mix together with ungloved hands, as Myers Middle School students did repeatedly this morning, is a crucial ingredient missing from most mainstream teaching and learning.

To begin with, our classrooms are used largely for transmission of information from teacher to student, which is a pretty narrow conception of teaching and learning. And students use two of their five sense to receive such information, sight and hearing. And that’s a problem. Our sense of touch, taste and smell are critical parts of being sentient beings. More than that, teaching should serve needs of students with multiple learning styles. But most of all, learning from experience is often deeper and more meaningful than word-based transmission of information. And experiences without touching makes up a pretty slender slice of the experience universe.

So, school gardening’s support for experiential learning can always include encouraging kids to get hands dirty, whether indoors or outside. And an approach to that can almost always include suggesting digging and mixing. But here’s the key: it should be without pressuring and without rushing to offer gloves. Kids will move beyond their comfort zones when they are ready, but not when we harangue them and not if we make it completely unnecessary. 

The hands you see pushing water and potting mix around in the accompanying photo were part of a class initiative today that involved starting about 1,500 pea seeds (with 1,000 more planned for tomorrow). We are growing pea shoots by the 10-inch-by-20-inch tray with five family and consumer science classes. Very young pea plants, whose stems and leaves taste just like fresh peas, will anchor a green salad that each class will make in two weeks. And just like many kids’ hesitancy to get their hands dirty, many kids will probably be hesitant to eat greens, and especially greens that aren’t wrapped in plastic. But also, just as many kids overcame their hesitancy this morning to getting their hands dirty – because we were gentle in nudging them –we fully expect many to overcome their hesitancy to eat the greens we’re growing, partly because we are gentle in our nudging, but also because participation in growing the greens will make all the difference in the world.

It seems to us like an approach to teaching and learning.

–Bill Stoneman

We made salad from freshly picked greens at a recent Myers Middle School Garden Club. Thirty-four kids were with us that afternoon. And most ate. The reviews were overwhelmingly positive, including requests for second helpings. But the best, without doubt, was from a student who said, “I don’t eat vegetables. But I liked that.”

We have seen it before. We are confident that we will see it again. We think we know what’s going on. And we think there are some powerful lessons in this recurring Vegetable Project experience.

A secret salad dressing recipe is not likely the explanation for the cleaned plates. Continue reading →

“Gardening isn’t about plants,” says Alys Fowler in a recent essay in the British newspaper The Guardian. “It’s about everything else: the soil, the insects, the birds, mammals and reptiles, and how you sit in this world. The plants are the final flourish, the gift of reciprocity from all the others.”

We could not make a better case for building gardens at schools and Continue reading →

Culinary students at Albany High School’s Abrookin Career and Technical Center sampled sampled beans, cucumbers, peppers a host of herbs at our Albany High garden on Thursday of last week and took back to the classroom armloads of corn, a few potatoes, green onions, Swiss chard and more. More than 100 students in five family and consumer science classes took in the Myers Middle School garden on Monday, where juicy red tomatoes were the big attraction. On Tuesday, we had the pleasure of tasting dishes in the Abrookin classroom kitchen that included our potatoes and chard.

It has been a busy few days! And with a new school year upon us and a bit Continue reading →

Sometimes the intended audience for what someone thinks is a great idea does not jump immediately with delight. The first week of school in Albany provides two examples, one involving an offer of luscious vine-ripened tomatoes and the other an offer of an opportunity to move some instruction outdoors.

Neither was embraced with the enthusiasm that we thought would be almost automatic. Perhaps we forgot some of lessons we have learned slowly over the years of digging in the dirt with Albany kids and talking with paid educators about what the Vegetable Project is about. Really, we know from experience that neither group can be rushed into Continue reading →

The Vegetable Project has an important message for some really great friends:

THANK YOU!

We are so grateful for quite a number of generous contributions that we have received in recent months. And we are long overdue in sharing word of each with everyone who follows our efforts to build a bit of doing and touching and tasting and experiencing into teaching and learning in Albany.

The Whitehall Neighborhood Association, led by Robert Murphy, is the Vegetable Project’s 2021 Growing Season Sponsor. The Growing Season Sponsorship, a key piece in the Vegetable Project’s financial and programming puzzle each year, provides vital wherewithal for the breadth of our undertakings, including planting and maintaining gardens at two schools, Continue reading →

Plan ahead! The days will get shorter. And colder. Winter happens. Spring never comes as quickly as we’d like around here. Planting flower bulbs, however, gives us a great reason to stay outside and keep getting our hands dirty in autumn’s chill. It is a great way to add spring color to your garden. And it does even more than that when you buy the bulbs in our Flower Power Fundraiser now through Oct. 15. 

The Vegetable Project receives half of all proceeds raised by our sale of bulbs. And that means that you contribute to our program to create hands-on learning opportunities for Albany kids when you buy bulbs. It means you support our work teaching kids where their food comes from. It means that you support outdoor instruction. More than all of that, your purchase and your planting makes a statement that we can make a difference with kids who deserve teaching and learning that builds on doing and touching and tasting and experiencing.

Please click here to see the selection and place your order: http://vegetableproject.fpfundraising.com.

We installed a native perennial garden at Albany High School in June, right next to our vegetable garden. We hope it will be seen by the school district’s curriculum and instruction mandarins as a useful teaching tool.

We believe that a walking field trip to our garden would pique student interest in how ecosystems function and help students understand why the National Audubon Society calls native plants – plants that grew naturally in a part of the world before we started thinking about moving things from continent to another 531 years ago – “the ecological basis upon which life depends, including birds and people.”

We would wager that students would get why Cornell ornithologist Ken Rosenberg, Continue reading →

It takes a village, as the saying goes, to create opportunities for Albany kids for doing and touching and tasting and experiencing. That means we offer many opportunities for you to pitch in and opportunities for you to make a difference, with others or alone and with and without kids. Here are a few:

Continue reading →