What shall we grow?

Activity

A planning activity to choose vegetables to grow in the school garden.

  • Estimated time: 30 minutes
  • Location: Outdoors & Indoors
  • School term: All year round
  • Level of experience: No experience needed
  • Subject(s): English, Maths, Art&DT

Learning objectives

  • Express opinion on vegetable preferences
  • Learn when to grow different crops
  • Decide collectively what to grow
  • Produce a month by month crop planner

Preparation

Ask your group to think about the vegetables they like to eat. Ask them to bring in recipes books or magazines from home that may have pictures of these vegetables.

Print out Vegetable crop planner, Vegetable Spotter Guide 1 and Guide 2, month by month guides to an edible school garden for spring, summer, autumn and the blank planner.

Equipment

Step by step

  1. Make a list of all the vegetables your group like to eat.
  2. Look at pictures of different vegetables as a prompt or bring in examples of different vegetables and taste them.
  3. You could ask the your group to vote for their favourite by giving them sticky post-it notes and counting up the votes. Point out less obvious vegetables that are needed for recipes for example onions and garlic.
  4. Can we actually grow these vegetables? Check on the vegetable crop planner and RHS Veg Planner to see if they can be sown and harvested in the time and season available.
  5. Decide as a group which vegetables to grow. Up to four different vegetables is a good guide, but this can depend on the space available.
  6. For each of the chosen vegetables create a plan of when to sow and harvest them. Use the blank month by month planner for this.  

Hints & tips

  • For an extension activity, look at recipes and find out when to plant and harvest the ingredients.
  • Use this activity as part of our Spring Seed Sowing and Grow Your Own Lunch class growing topics.