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Harvesting is one of the highlights of each season. Students enjoy
the pulling, pinching, and digging as much as they enjoy the eating.
Being organized is the key to harvesting with a class.
Harvest fruiting vegetables as you go.
Plants like tomato, peas, pepper, cucumber, beans, and squash that grow above the ground
should be harvested as you notice they are ripe. This will signal
the plant to keep producing. Let the students eat what they
harvest. To prevent waste, we do not let students take food
home. It won't be enough to share at home and it usually doesn't
travel well in a backpack. Our goal is to offer tastings fresh
from the garden.
Save root vegetables for harvest week. Except for radishes, we allow root vegetables to develop
until the seasonal harvest. We've learned to harvest most spring
radishes when they look ready to avoid harvesting an overdeveloped,
fibrous radish.
Supplies to keep with you for
a quick, one-item harvest:
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basket to collect harvest
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bucket of water for rinsing food
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bucket of soapy water for washing hands
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cutting
board
-
paring
knife
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serving container
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toothpicks
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compost buckets
For larger class harvesting, add these supplies:
Check your garden bed ahead of your class time to see
what is ready to harvest. Then, decide how many
students will be assigned to harvest a particular food item. This
is a good time to assign the task of weeding, too!
Remind your students that everyone will have a job and
every job is important for your harvest day. There are
separate teams that will work together toward the same goal - a harvest
feast.
Review the harvesting process with students before you
get to their beds. This is best handled in the
classroom, but grouping your students together outside for a discussion
before you start will also work. Explain the basics for harvesting
the foods in your beds. Basically, if the part you'll eat is the
leaf, you'll pinch off the leaves and leave the plant in the ground.
If the part you'll eat is a root, you'll have to pull it out of the
ground. Fingers should be touching the soil and grasping the root,
not the leaves. Once it's out, twist off the leaves for composting
and save the root in a basket. If you'll eat the fruit of the
plant, use hands to hold the fruit in one hand and the vine or stem
where the fruit is attached in the other. Pinch or twist off the
fruit, leave the stem intact and the plant in the ground. Be more
specific according to the plants in your garden. We leave the
fruiting plants in the ground until the plants stop producing or are
affected by frost.
Assign a team of students the job of harvesting a
particular food. Give a basket and any necessary tools
(scissors, trowels) to each team. If you have a large crop of a
particular food item, assign a specific number of items for a student to
harvest and clean, for example 4-5 lettuce leaves, 3 carrots.
Compost your harvest scraps.
You can compost in a path by assigning some students the job of digging
a hole about 12 inches deep and 12 inches wide. Or, assign some
students the job of carrying compost to the compost pile.
Have your students clean their harvest.
If you will be eating your harvest
at the end of your class, have students clean their food.
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To
clean leafy crops:
The leaves above ground are mostly clean due to rain and watering.
By harvesting only the leaves instead of the entire plant, soil
stays on the ground and not on the leaves. Set up a cleaning
station of a series of four small clean buckets filled with fresh,
clean water. Form a line of students at one end. Each student
rinses a few leaves in the first bucket, then the second, third, and
fourth. Drain in a colander.
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To
clean root crops:
Set up a separate cleaning station of small buckets filled with
water. Designate buckets used to gently scrub off soil (bring scrub
brushes) and buckets used to rinse.
If you are harvesting to use foods
later, have students rinse the food pulled from the ground to remove
much of the soil. Using hands to rub the food gently should do the
job.
Share your extra harvest.
If you are harvesting as you go so your plants keep producing, you may
end up with more than your class can sample at one time. Develop a
system to share your harvest with your cafeteria, a local food pantry,
the teachers' lunchroom, or other classrooms whose garden may not have
fared as well as yours. We designate a spot in a central garden
area and leave trays for classes to drop off their extra harvest.
Don't forget to offer extras to your classroom volunteers.
Follow these links for more information:
Harvesting - general notes about harvesting
Spring harvest - harvest a salad from seeds planted in early spring
Fall harvest - harvest soup in late summer
Harvest Soup - a school-wide
celebration of the harvest
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