Parkdale High students planted lettuce, pea, and chard seedlings for their raised garden beds.
Mix soils, seeds, plants, greenhouses, Best Buddies, and the Institute of Applied Agriculture (IAA) and you grow the perfect event. Just ask the 25 students from Parkdale High School who came to the College Park campus on March 7 to gain hands-on lessons in growing their own produce.
Parkdale High School, a Prince George’s County high school that has a small, raised-bed vegetable garden, brought two classes of students to visit the IAA. The two classes are paired in a "Best Buddies" program. Best Buddies, an international organization, creates opportunities in high schools for students with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) to form meaningful friendships with their peers, improve communication and self-advocacy skills, and feel valued by their school community. One was a class of ESOL (English as a second language) students, and the other was a class of students with a range of developmental disabilities.
“It was inspiring to see these two groups of students working together on a shared project, and everyone was smiling,” said IAA Lecturer Ken Ingram, who helped organize the event. The students toured of the University of Maryland Research Greenhouses, walking through the various greenhouses, seeing technological features and getting quizzed on their plant identification skills. IAA student Marcus Maxwell, an Ornamental Horticulture major, led a discussion on green roofs.
After the students marveled over the pineapple Ingram has been growing, they went to work at one of three stations: one for seeding lettuce (lechuga), one for peas (guisantes), and one for chard (acelga). The students divided into three teams, one for each crop. They labeled and seeded three trays of cell packs for each crop, which will yield 120 plants of each crop. After six weeks in the UMD greenhouses, 360 seedlings will be delivered to the high school. Using the seedlings, Ingram will teach the students how to plant and care for their own garden.
^^Pictured: Parkdale's garden beds await new seedlings!
“We'll be sending the students photos every week so that they can see the progress of their plants,” said IAA Lecturer Meredith Epstein who also helped with the event. “The students cheered when they heard this.”
Finally, Ingram gave each student a plant to take home. Everyone was smiling. “The IAA is great at providing opportunities like this for local schools, and it helps the students identify educational and career opportunities they might not have known about otherwise,” said Ingram. The IAA provides hands-on education that opens doors to successful careers.
“None of the students said they liked peas,” laughs Ingram. “I told them the fresh ones taste better. Soon they’ll be able to take a taste test.” Now, the Best Buddies may need to team up with a chef to create recipes for all their fresh vegetables.
