A little bit of lettuce can go a long way. Just ask Karen Van De Walle, veteran agriculture educator at Denver Community School District. Through the Iowa Department of Education’s Grow It, Eat It subgrant, Van De Walle’s students grew lettuce and other produce while also cultivating their technical skills and connections to local food sources and healthy eating.
“When we saw the Grow It, Eat It grant, we knew it was a great opportunity to get local food onto our kids’ plates,” she said. “It allowed us to get our foot in the door and provide healthy local foods, like lettuce or other produce and herbs from our community garden that our kitchen can use in school meals.”
Funded by the 2022 USDA Farm to School grant, the Department’s Grow It, Eat It subgrant opportunity awarded $4,000 each to Denver and four other Iowa school districts to strengthen partnerships between school agriculture and nutrition programs. Schools could purchase small gardening equipment, supplies, seeds or food preparation equipment with the funding. Food products grown through the Grow It, Eat It initiative were required to be served through the school nutrition program.
“The Grow It, Eat It subgrant can help schools engage students through the different stages of local foods,” said Meg Collins, nutrition education consultant for the Iowa Department of Education. “They can experience planting, growing, harvesting and, finally, tasting the end product. Students can have access to more fresh, local foods while also having a better understanding of what it takes to get them onto our tables.”
At Denver, the Grow It, Eat It funding helped purchase two hydroponic systems, which use a water-based nutrient solution instead of soil to grow plants. The hydroponic systems were used to grow lettuce inside Van De Walle’s classroom and provided several learning opportunities for students, both planned and unplanned.
“We built the hydroponic systems and had a few problems with the PVC pipes,” said Cody Koepke, a 16-year-old junior at Denver High School. “We were able to troubleshoot problems, though, and get them to run the way they should, which was definitely rewarding.”
As part of the agriculture business class, Cody and his classmates cut metal, glued PVC pipes and tested the hydroponic systems. Other classes like the introduction to agriculture group were also involved in the project and were responsible for providing quality control through taste testing.
Additionally, Denver’s Grow It, Eat It subgrant provided new tools for eighth grade agriculture students to use in the town’s community garden, where they grew produce like tomatoes, cucumbers and herbs.
“Between the three classes, we had around 45 students involved in our Grow It, Eat It initiative,” Van De Walle said. “This has allowed students to take ownership and really see the steps into growing and harvesting something. It added value to what we are learning in the classroom.”
With the two hydroponic systems and community garden, Van De Walle’s students grew close to 125 pounds of produce, which provided opportunities for them to connect with school nutrition staff and incorporate their crops into the school lunch room.
“The school nutrition program staff was really receptive to including our produce,” Van De Walle said. “Lettuce was a great starting point, too, because it is a product they can not always get from their suppliers.”
In addition to lettuce, Denver’s school nutrition program has also used student-grown cucumbers in their lunches and dried thyme for spaghetti sauce, which has inspired Van De Walle’s classes to think of what they can grow next.
“The students get excited by seeing these results and start brainstorming on what else we can grow, which is a whole learning process in itself,” she said. “They have to problem-solve and think about logistics, such as what will work best with the hydroponic system, environment and even the foods we can use in meals.”
The Denver agriculture students plan to continue using the hydroponic systems and community garden to grow more lettuce and other products throughout the year to fuel not only school meals but also their knowledge and skill expansion.
“It’s cool to see how you can keep improving your process for growing things for better outcomes in the future,” Cody said. “You can build from past mistakes and learn how to best use the hydroponic unit for growing healthy food.”