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some pride in,” said Taylor. This realisation was echoed by Lynette Ovens, who co-manages the project at South Island School, “For most of our children involved in the project, this was the first garden they had ever dealt with.” The impact has been noticeable. The closing ceremony, which took place at Munsang College in June, provided an opportunity for visitors to talk to the children themselves. Proudly displaying the plants they had collected from the beds only that morning, students of Quarry Bay School described the many intricacies of micro agriculture. “We have to be very careful with the harvesting. Sometimes you want to take out the whole plant, and other times you only want the leaves,” explained Maddie, aged ten. “We love cooking and eating them too,” added Janki, who is in the same year. Their group had conducted various experiments such as altering the growing conditions of tomatoes to ascertain what suited the plants best. They also noted that only one of their carrots had come out in the shape they had expected based on what one can buy in supermarkets, though many of the unusually shaped vegetables were perfectly edible. In many schools, students could choose which vegetables they grew, and most opted for a mix of vegetables, from pok choi to chilli peppers. Some students learnt the hard way that certain vegetables, such as maize or tomatoes, don’t respond well to the relatively shallow soil or inclement temperatures. Other children related dealing with crop blights of various kinds and the measures they took to preserve their vegetables, such as shaving off small areas afflicted by fungi. Children from the Hong Kong Baptist University Affiliated Wong Kam Fai School found themselves contending with flies, fungi and ferocious birds, but the result was worth it they said – a grand hotpot involving all their vegetables. Better still, most of the schools had a full planting schedule, whereby new seeds would be sown, according to the season, as soon as the last crop was harvested. The Growing Together Scheme had one further aspect to it – recycled compost. Using a Japanese composting system, Bokashi, supplied by local NGO Teng Hoi Conservation Organisation, children at 6 of the 20 schools recycled their leftover food into a fertiliser, which they then used to help along the vegetables in their microgarden boxes. Students from Quarry Bay School dealt regularly with the potent Bokashi compost, and
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12年8月13日 上午11:56