The North Carolina State University Agronomy Club: Establishing a School Vegetable Garden.

The NCSU Agronomy Club has established a partnership with a local elementary school to create a school garden.  Raised beds were built in the spring of 2011, and were inaugurated in conjunction with the elementary school Earth Day celebration.  NCSU Agronomy Club students worked with several teachers at the school, and members of the parent teacher association (PTA) to obtain the materials and permissions necessary to establish the raised beds.  Agronomy club students gathered for a work day and constructed the beds in an area that was previously an unused grassy plot at the school, using some materials that the school had on hand for landscaping purposes.  The elementary students started tomato, pepper and lettuce seeds in their classrooms using donated materials.  During Earth Week the agronomy students helped the elementary students to transplant vegetable starts into the raised beds.  Teachers at the school were able to use the gardens as a way to reinforce science lessons, as well as to incorporate lessons about nutrition, cooking, transportation of food, and local agriculture.  The raised beds were left unattended during the summer, and community members were free to take the produce, while some parents returned to the school to harvest the vegetables for donation to a local food bank.  The agronomy students again interacted with the elementary school during the fall season, and participated in planting the raised beds with fall crops.  In the future, the NCSU Agronomy club would like to leverage additional funds to build more raised beds at the school, so that each grade (grades 1-5) would have one garden area to call their own.  They would also like to purchase and plant some perennial, fruit-bearing plants such as strawberries and blueberries.