Is continuing the student club through the summer an option? Our local high school FFA plants a garden and maintains it through the summer. The produce is donated to a local food pantry.

Raised beds in the courtyard could avoid removing gravel, still have to haul soil in though.

We talked about continuing through the summer, but we're pretty rural so everyone's pretty spread out (none are old enough to drive either, which requires commitment from the parents). Other deciding factor was that since it's an internal courtyard, we'd have to move through the school to get to it. In the summer the floors are getting stripped, waxed, and other various construction things kind of put a damper on that. I get looked at crosseyed by maintenance staff if I have to go and get something out of my classroom.

Incidentally, we don't have an FFA chapter at our school which I always thought was odd. I'm going to try to get some grants for raised beds this year though and see what happens. That still leaves me with the issue of the tight time frame.

Even with your growing season constraints, your students can at least get a little experience with growing food. That’s still worthwhile in my book.

The things I can think of to grow quickly are probably not the most appealing to school age kids (spinach, radishes, lettuce). Maybe try cross posting in additional forums, like vegetable gardening, to get more eyes on it.

Hi trpnbils,

" If we don't maintain it, nobody does, and the grass gets to be 3 feet high and an eyesore. "

They say that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. If the grass grows 3 feet high, that soil can't be too bad for growing things the way it is now. This could be a "if life gives you lemons, make lemonade" type of situation.

" What would be a good approach for us to maximize use of this? My biggest thing is that since we're not in school for most of June, all of July, and most of August that pretty much kills the possibility of growing food crops (and most flowers) in traditional ways. "

Winter wheat is a food crop that is planted in the Fall, grows all Winter and Spring, and is harvested approximately when school lets out. There are many varieties of it, and you could plant patches of several different varieties to compare various properties. You could hand-grind some flour samples for the Home Ec class to use to make bread or something "edible".

And you could challenge your class to brain-storm a good use for that 3-feet of grass. As I recall there were experiments in Florida to experiment with making wallboard from Johnson Grass. Maybe you could make some kind of paper from that dead grass by grinding it up. A good kitchen blender might be able to break the grass down.

ZM

Hmmm, that is tough. Thinking along the same lines as ZM and making lemonade: what if you took the weedy outer perimeter and made it a native plant/meadow style garden? The students could identify what's there right now, test the soil, drainage, etc, and find native plants that like rocky shallow soil.

You could solarize the beds with plastic over the summer to take care of the weeds (without bothering the custodian!). There are loads of low maintenance fall blooming and spring blooming plants that could make the space look happy and tended while you add other fun projects like building raised cold frame beds, student art projects, etc.