PORT TOWNSEND — Sunflowers. Tomatoes. December may be dark and damp, but students at Grant Street Elementary School are thinking ahead to spring.
Students gathered at the school garden last week to thank the Boeing Bluebills and other community partners for building a greenhouse in the school garden.
Funded by the Port Townsend Education Foundation grant, the greenhouse will be used to make the student gardener’s efforts even more productive.
“We’re using this as a season extender,” said Candice Cosler, school garden coordinator for Jefferson County, during the gathering Tuesday.
“We’re going to use it for vegetables and flower starts in the spring. We can start things early and grow things that we’re now growing in cloches.”
Pilot programs
Cosler leads school garden pilot programs at Grant Street and Quilcene schools funded by a nearly $100,000 grant from the state Department of Ecology with a matching grant from Jefferson County Public Works’ education funds.
The programs started last spring. Since then, students, teachers and staff at both schools have embraced the program, which has grown by leaps and bounds, according to Al Cairns, manager of the county Public Works’ solid waste program.
“We handed them a ball, and they ran with it,” Cairns said.
“They’ve requested doubling the size of this garden, and the list of donors is also huge. Businesses have donated materials or given us deep discounts.”
The 8-by-10-foot greenhouse was built from a kit by Boeing Bluebills, led by Myron Vogt, project manager for the group.
Fellow member Ken Winter helped Vogt pour the concrete footings, then assemble the myriad parts.
On Tuesday, students in the Individualized Choice Education Program presented handmade thank-you cards to Vogt and Winter to share with Boeing Bluebill members.
Also on hand for the gathering was Barbara Sterritt, a member of the Port Townsend Education Foundation Board.
‘Innovative project’
“This is the most creative and innovative project we’ve funded this year,” Sterritt said.
“It’s a cross-curriculum project that involves many grades and is a partnership with Public Works, the Master Gardeners and others.”
The Jefferson County Master Gardeners funded a worm bin and garden tools for Dorothy Stengel’s first- and second-grade class at Grant Street. That project grew to include the entire school, which now composts all campus waste in its compost bin.
This fall, Cosler worked with 200 students in eight classes at Grant Street who planted spinach, beets, lettuce and other fall crops. The program uses the garden as a science laboratory for the study of botany, soils, composting, mulching and food harvesting and preparation.
At Quilcene, all students in kindergarten through sixth grade participated in the garden program, along with interested high school students and 4-H club members, Cosler said.
Students also made cider with a hand-operated press and visited local farms and orchards to take part in the harvest and learn about food storage and preservation methods.
“The whole school is now collecting food waste from the kitchen and lunchroom for the compost program,” Cosler said.
After Tuesday’s gathering at the greenhouse, ICE students adjourned indoors, where Cosler showed them how to make bird feeders from used plastic bottles and wrapping paper, using potatoes grown in their garden to create stamped designs on recycled paper from the local paper mill.
Since it started two years ago, the Port Townsend Education Foundation has awarded $35,000 in grants to enrich students’ academic experience, Sterritt said.
For applications and more information, go to www.pteducationfoundation.org.
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Port Townsend/Jefferson County reporter-columnist Jennifer Jackson can be reached at jjackson@olypen.com.
