Feed the Children, Grow their MInds

 

Thanks to the Growing Connection, (a U.N. organization) there are EarthBoxes at P.S. 257 in the East Williamsburg neighborhood of Brooklyn. 

You’re never too young to start going green, says the administration at P.S. 257 in East Williamsburg. 

The school has launched Growing Connection, a United Nations-sponsored gardening program that teaches kids how to grow their own fruits, vegetables, herbs, and flowers on the roof of their school. The program connects students from all over the world, who share recipes and gardening tips.

Led by 3rd grade teacher Alexa Pinsker, each classroom was given an Earthbox planter to maintain throughout the spring. Students were responsible for planting the seeds, watering them, weeding the planters, and ultimately harvesting their crop of spinach, basil, cilantro, and chili peppers. 

Pinsker instructed the students on how to prepare the greens and supplied them with recipes that utilized their school-grown bounty. In just a few weeks, students will be selling the veggies at the Graham Avenue Greenmarket, with the money raised going back to the school.

Sub-irrigated grow boxes should be growing fresh vegetables in every school in America. It baffles me that they aren't and that those that are there were donated by a U.N. organization. Where are our domestic organizations? 

Slogans, buzz words and rhetoric aren't going to solve our national over weight, obesity and diabetes problems. We need boots and boxes on the ground be it on rooftops or pavement, no turned earth necessary.  

Sub-irrigated grow box gardening is a way to do something with very little investment of other than education and leadership. 

Let's all hope that a new administration brings that kind of leadership. We desperately need it.