School Fruit Orchard and Vegetable Garden

TRANSFORM LUMWE II PRIMARY SCHOOL

ORCHARD AND VEGETABLE GARDEN PROJECT

These school gardens are essential in the health and wellbeing of students, allowing them to learn and prosper.

Proposed Activities

JAM will establish a fruit orchard at Lumwe II Primary School to benefit the school children enrolled at the school. The orchard will be compliment by a vegetable garden on the school premises. Together with the students, JAM will get information on how to grow the chosen crops, how much to grow, how much space will be needed, when to plant and how to harvest. This will also suggest which crops are suitable for different age groups to grow.

A school fruit orchard/vegetable garden can have a strong influence on what children eat. It can increase the variety in the diet, adding essential vitamins and minerals in fruit, nuts and vegetables. It can create a taste for a variety of nutritious foods so that children and their families will plant and cook more varied and nutritious foods themselves. It can extend and balance school meals.

Many schools only receive dry staple foods for school meals or take-home rations. Fresh fruit and vegetables from the garden/orchard can make all the difference in creating well-balanced and varied meals. It can provide snacks to keep children going. Breakfast and mid-morning snacks and drinks are especially valuable since they give children energy for the whole morning. Children can learn how to make their snacks from garden food or food produced at home. It can build awareness in children and their families of what makes a healthy diet. All these influences are most effective when school gardens are taken as a model and imitated by children and families in the home garden. In this way, the school garden shows what can be done, and its influence is multiplied.

In general, if we want to add food value and variety to children’s diet, it is not very useful to grow staple foods which children are eating already, except perhaps some maize or rice for snacks. Instead, it is good to go for several different kinds of fruit and vegetable. Roots and tubers e.g., cassava, taro, yam, sweet potato, potato are also very good sources of energy and some vitamins. They should be eaten with many other foods. Vegetables and fruits are rich in many different vitamins and minerals and other substances which protect our health, especially dark green leafy vegetables and yellow or orange fruits and vegetables e.g., pumpkin, yellow/orange sweet potatoes, papaya, oranges, apples, mango, carrots. Dark green leafy vegetables release all their nutritional value when combined with other foods. Children should eat five different types and colours of vegetables and fruits every day: dark green, yellow/orange, red, citrus and legumes. If there are seasonal shortages, we can also choose some foods which can be processed and stored e.g., green leafy vegetables, groundnuts, oilseeds, beans and peas, corn, mango, banana, sweet potatoes, tomatoes.

Mint and lemongrass are used in companion planting to control pests. They also make good drinks, and an infusion of lemongrass relieves the symptoms of flu. Fresh drinks can be made from mango, guava, pumpkin, papaya, banana, oranges, lemons, carrots and tomatoes. Mixing them can improve the flavour – try carrot and orange, or pumpkin juice with lemon, orange and a little sugar.

Generally, it is best to grow local foods. Local plants have adapted to the local environment – for example, they may be able to grow in drier conditions. It may also be possible to make more use of foods growing wild. The idea is not to have new foods, but greater variety, better preparation, new combinations and greater quantities of these good local foods.

Proposed Budget

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Please donate and watch this orange tree grow as we reach our target of £3,350

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