School Gardens Teaching the Next Generation of Gardeners

Reader Contribution by Texas Pioneer Woman
Published on January 21, 2015
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The art of growing food to feed your own family, the ability to be self-sufficient in successfully providing nutritious meals for oneself and others, and the knowledge of growing these healthy foods is dying with our older generation. Gardening edible foods was once held at the highest esteem; it meant the difference between having food to eat and starvation. We were once independent producers of our family’s food. We grew and tended to plants, knowing, if treated correctly, they would produce food for our family and fodder for our animals. (Read more: Reclaiming Our Food Independence)

My husband and I, along with two dedicated teachers at a local elementary school in my corner of the woods, are teaching several students how to garden in an after-school garden club. We recently talked to them about making new plants through propagation using stem cuttings. My husband and I brought stock plants from our farm such as camelias, roses, English ivy, wisteria, rosemary, crape myrtle, house ivy, azalea, blackberry, euonymus, spirea and grapes for the students to use.

We taught them that taking a cutting involves removing a piece of a leaf, stem or root and placing it in a growing medium where it then develops the other parts that it left behind. For example, a stem will then grow roots. Stem cuttings have about a 50-percent success rate, so we have to make more stem cuttings than we need because not all of them will survive. We also explained why we propagate from stem cuttings; it is a simple and frugal way to get more plants.

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