Penn Kidder takes lessons to backyard garden

Penn-Kidder seventh-grader Mariella Vitale knows the benefit of growing fruits and vegetables in your backyard.

For those concerned about what goes into the food we eat, there’s no replacement for the simplicity of homegrown produce.

“You really don’t know what chemicals they put on them. When you grow them in your backyard, you know what’s going on them,” Vitale said.

Vitale and her classmates recently built and started cultivating their own garden, thanks to grants obtained by two of their teachers — Pam McElmoyle and Mike Wagner.

Starting from seeds, and using compost made from cafeteria lunches, the students are in the process of growing a cornucopia of fresh fruits and vegetables.

Along the way, their teachers taught them about their own food supply, types of produce you can grow in Pennsylvania, and ways to deter pests.

The students loved the hands-on aspect of putting together the garden — shoveling mulch, planting flowers, getting their hands dirty.

“There was a whole pile over there. We shoveled it into wheelbarrows,” Andrew Coolbaugh said.

But the process started long before that. A few months ago they cultivated seeds in pods of peat moss. When the small plants outgrew them, they transferred them to bottles — recycled bottles from the water distributed to students during the PSSA exam.

“We did eggplant, we did corn, we did tomatoes, peppers and cucumbers and we did squash. We also did strawberries,” said seventh-grade science teacher Mike Wagner.

Throughout the year, students got lessons about gardening and where food comes from.

During their lessons they learned about which fruits and vegetables grew in Pennsylvania.

Then they broke into smaller groups and learned about each plant they’d be planting.

“We did research on specific plants, that way once we planted it, we knew everything we could about it,” Amaya Heffelfinger said.

They also learned about common insects which could impact their garden, and ways to keep them out without using pesticides. In the mountains of Pennsylvania, deer are often a gardener’s nemesis, so there’s also a 6-foot fence surrounding the garden.

“We learned what type of pests destroy most of the plants, and how we can keep them away from our plants,” Brianna Payne said.

The project started more than a year ago when seventh-grade teacher Pam McElmoyle got a $2,800 grant from the Pennsylvania Environment Council and Pocono Forests and Waters Conservation Mini-Grant.

Fellow seventh-grade teacher Mike Wagner got a $2,000 grant from the SHINE program to match the contribution.

The school’s wellness committee, headed by Travis Andrews, made their own compost from food they collected from lunches.

The mulch was supplemented with more from Jim Smith of Pine Point Plaza, which was obtained with help from the Kidder Township Environmental Advisory Committee.