Edible Gardens & Environment

PSGC began its work on food systems literacy by funding, establishing and maintaining Edible Gardens at all six schools in the Princeton Public Schools district. Our next step was to fund Edible Gardens stewards/instructors to make each garden unique to its students and to foster curricular connections and to connect children to the natural systems that support all life.

Select a school from the drop-down menu to see edible garden activity there.

Lessons in food, freedom at Littlebrook

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By Assenka Oksiloff
Princeton Public Schools

As part of Food Day celebrations this week, students at Littlebrook Elementary reaped the bounty of their harvest and also got a lesson from guest speakers Shirley Satterfield and Henry Pannell about the origins of soul food. Satterfield and Pannell, long-time educators and members of the Princeton community, talked about the recipes and taste of soul food – and its history and cultural context.

With the help of Garden Educator Priscilla Hayes, this year’s Littlebrook fifth graders are growing a Freedom Garden, which consists of crops that once were grown by slaves from Africa. The plants harvested this year include okra, cowpeas, collard greens and fish peppers.

Satterfield, a former board member and currently an advisor of the Historical Society of Princeton, knows a lot about the connection between food, culture and social struggles: She has lived it.As a child growing up in Princeton, she was among the first pupils from the Witherspoon School for the Colored, which closed in 1948, to integrate with Nassau School under the Princeton Plan. While attending college in North Carolina, she joined the Greensboro Four at the Woolworth’s lunch counter to protest segregation.

It was in the South that Satterfield grew to love soul food. Pannell, whose family hails from Virginia, grew up with collard greens and kale in the garden, still two of his favorite foods, which he continues to grow in his own garden. Satterfield gets her kale from her share in a local organic farm, and she told the children that she now eats the leafy green in a salad as often as she eats it in soul food dishes.

As part of the lesson for Food Day, Satterfield and Pannell took the children’s Freedom Garden produce to local chefs William Fowler and Edward Rice to prepare traditional African-American dishes for the students to sample. All of this was arranged with the help of Peter Young, Jr., a local entrepreneur, whose projects include a catering business with an emphasis on soul food. For the kids, it was a way of getting a deeper understanding of why food matters.

“When people ask us why we have a garden program, the quickest answer is always that it helps kids learn where food comes from,” said Amy Mayer, a member of the Princeton School Gardens Cooperative and sponsor of food- and garden-related events in the schools and the community. “That means, of course, understanding how plants turn sunlight and soil into fuel for our bodies. But that isn’t all. The foods we eat also, in a sense, come from our friends and families, our communities, our cultures, and our history.”

Johnson Park Fall 2012 Update

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During the summer months, parents with children at Johnson Park volunteered their time in the garden to help water and tend plants. This enabled the students on their return to jump straight into garden activities, harvesting, cooking and tasting the produce they planted before their summer break. It is interesting and fun sometimes to taste what a vegetable is like before it is cooked and in my opinion when organically grown it tastes even better, especially when freshly picked. During September, students were busy making dishes such as salsa for the Johnson Park picnic event and at this event parents had the opportunity to sample the garden produce.

The Boy Scouts built a second compost for JP; students learned the process of decomposing vegetation and the value it brings to the vegetable soil beds when ready. There is a big oak tree in the garden so plenty of leaves to rake and deposit, as well as left over vegetable plants to start the composting process. The acorns from the oak tree were also collected and students planted them in the hope they will sprout in time for Arbor Day, April 26,  and have grown sufficiently enough to take home and plant.

In October, kindergarten and first grade enjoyed various activities with pumpkins as well as tasting pumpkin seeds baked in olive oil. Second grade learned all about the Black Swallowtail Butterfly. They made soup from the host plants used by this native insect. Third grade had the opportunity to gather herbs and tie them using a slip-knot. The students took them home to hang and dry for later use in their home cooking. Fourth grade experimented with vegetables and berries as a natural dye. Fourth grade also had the chance to make a delicious soup called Three Sisters, consisting of squash and beans. Fifth grade made pumpkin muffins.

November really saw the end of most of the garden produce, the season finished with most grades planting spring bulbs and scattering seeds, the vegetable beds were prepared for the following spring. Tools and equipment were cleaned and safely stored. 

Food Day means garden feast at Littlebrook

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Littlebrook Elementary School celebrated Food Day, Oct. 21, with a garden feast made with produce from the children’s edible gardens on campus. The menu included rosemary scones, beets and beet greens and home-grown popcorn. Festivities drew the attention of a reporter from the Princeton Packet, and netted a front-page story. story.