DONNA — Sixth-grade girls have fallen in love with worms at the IDEA College Preparatory charter school.

While little girls and worms are a seemingly odd couple, school district officials say the combination makes sense. The worms help produce compost for the school’s garden, and teachers use the garden to educate students about the environment.

“(The garden) provides a whole new canvas for inquiry,” said John Garland, assistant director of child nutrition for IDEA public schools.

While the organic garden is used as an outdoor classroom at the school, it also serves an equally important function: feeding the students fresh food that’s high in nutrients.

The school garden produces 60 pounds of lettuce per week that is used in salads and other lunchtime meals for the school’s 1,200 students. That quantity could rise to 80 pounds per week by the year’s end. The garden also produces sweet peas, cucumbers, carrots and tomatoes. Garland said he tries to maximize the garden’s production in its limited space.

The campus opened in 2002, and Garland — known as “Farmer John” to the school’s students — built the garden in September at the start of the fall semester.

“It came from the desire to serve the absolute best food possible,” Garland said. “When you’re talking about good food, you’re talking about fresh food.”

Building the garden wasn’t easy. In addition to having to do some “political jockeying” to persuade the school to give him the land, Garland also had to deal with less-than-ideal soil conditions. But now, he considers the program an overwhelming success and says he’s proud to say the food — especially the lettuce — is particularly high in nutrients, according to recent measurements.

Barbara Storz, a horticulturist with Texas A&M University’s Texas Cooperative Extension office in Edinburg, praised IDEA Public Schools for supporting the garden. She said programs like Garland’s are part of a national trend.

“There’s a movement throughout the country of people saying, ‘Hey, where’s my food coming from?’” Storz said.

Garland said students aren’t involved in the actual ongoing production of food from the garden.

“The kids aren’t coming to school to learn to be farmworkers,” Garland explained. “Their parents are farmworkers.”

But the school is using the garden in some interesting ways to teach students about agriculture and the environment. Among the projects this year are:

>> Science students looked at carrots to learn about roots.

>> Art class students drew tomatoes growing in the garden.

>> Seventh-grade students took soil samples to study soil fertility.

“You teach pollination in science class,” Garland said, “and then you come in and see it.”

Giving children an up-close look at food production teaches them a valuable lesson about “intimacy with life and intimacy with food production,” Garland explained.

He recalled working with a group of students on a class project to plant sweet peas earlier this year. By the time they were harvested, the children were begging to eat them.

“Doesn’t that sound like something from The Twilight Zone?” Garland said. “Kids asking for peas.”

____

Ryan Holeywell covers PSJA and general assignments for The Monitor. He can be reached at (956) 683-4446.