‘It’s a wonderful thing’: Local students growing food for their school

Plants at the St. Elizabeth Catholic Elementary School Grow Club. (Cam Wiebe/CTV News Edmonton)

Every day is Earth Day for the students in the St. Elizabeth Catholic Elementary School Grow Club.

Students in the club have been learning about growing their own food and other plants.

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“We’re taking their old food scraps, we’re amending the soil to feed back to them to try and make a sustainable food source for our school,” said Nathan Bell, a Grade 3 teacher.

Banana peels, apple cores and other food scraps are turned into compost with red wiggler worms and used to grow things like lettuce. Before Christmas, the school grew 300 heads of lettuce and used it for the school’s nutrition program.

“We want to show people that you can grow your own garden instead of buying food or groceries,” said Tadana Ishe, a Grade 5 student.

Students in Grades 3-6 can participate in the club and are in charge of a tower garden.

On Tuesday, students were planting and naming spider plants.

“It’s a wonderful thing and I hope more schools do it because I think in our changing world, it’s more and more important that kids learn to grow their own food, that they should be able to not only just know where their food comes from, but be able to make that type of a source,” Bell said.

Tadana agreed, saying the club has a lot of fun learning about plants, customizing their towers and seeing the plants grow.

Students also get to practice literacy and intonation as they spend time reading to their plants.