Saving Seeds For Our Future

June 23, 2014 (Edible Hawaiian Islands)—Perhaps you have a few acres in Pāhoa, or maybe just some papaya trees and a couple of small planting beds in your cramped Honolulu backyard. You can still take steps toward more sustainable living by learning how to save your own seeds.
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Symposium showcases school garden benefits

June 9, 2014 (West Hawaii Today)—The hands teach the brain. This simple but often unrecognized fact was the centerpiece of discussions in Waimea on Saturday about how the island’s school gardens are helping students learn —  along with providing healthy fuel for the body and brain. “The hand is our greatest tool. You get that hand in the dirt and kids are going to start learning like crazy,” said Carla Hannaford, an internationally recognized expert in cognitive development.
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Something Good Is Sprouting Up In The School Yard

June 2, 2014 (Edible Hawaiian Islands)—A resurgence of school gardens in Hawai‘i isn’t just connecting students with the joy of getting dirty. The growing renaissance of outdoor learning is bringing a holistic awareness of health and nutrition to students and their families. What the kids learn at school translates into the home, where long-term changes can happen.
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Let’s get our keiki into the garden

June 1, 2014 (West Hawaii Today)—You may remember when most of our vegetables and fruit came in cans with colorful labels or were frozen into boxes available in the freezer section of the grocery store. As youngsters, we may have imagined that vegetables came from cans or boxes rather than out of the ground from a garden or farm. The decreasing contact with farms or gardens today promotes an increasing disconnect from the actual source of food for our keiki.
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Hawaii Island Schools May Get More Local Produce

May 8, 2014 (Hawai‘i Public Radio)—The Hawaii Island School Garden Network has a goal of exposing students around the island to the benefits of fresh fruits and vegetables. Generally that means the kids grow food in the school garden. But the Garden Network is looking at bringing in local fruits and vegetables another way, too. From Hawaii Island, Sherry Bracken has the story.
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Konawaena Brings School Garden Harvest to the Cafeteria

May 7, 2014 (Big Island Weekly)—Konawaena High School’s Rebecca Crabtree chose a senior project that will keep giving long after she has graduated. Inspired by her mother’s recollection of her high school salad bar, Crabtree and a crew of peers and teachers revamped a garden plot left behind from a student who graduated last year. In April students were treated to their first salad bar.
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USDA program brings local produce to local schools

May 6, 2014 (West Hawaii Today)—On the mainland, big farms can find ways to sell their produce to small school districts, but with the situation reversed in Hawaii, local farmers sometimes find it difficult to get their products to the state’s large public district, says Nancy Redfeather, program director of Hawaii Island School Garden Network.

That’s where the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Fresh Fruit and Vegetable Program comes in. The program provides funding to eligible schools — those serving students in kindergarten to sixth grade with at least half of the student population qualifying for free or reduced lunch — to purchase locally grown produce for morning and afternoon snacks.
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School garden events focus on professional development

KAMUELA, Hawai‘i—April 10, 2014—Online registration is now available for a weeklong series of educational events for school garden educators, teachers, and others passionate about improving student wellness, cognitive development, and engaging deeper learning. Taking place June 7–12 in Waimea on Hawai‘i Island, the four professional development events focus on the effectiveness of school gardens as an instructional strategy for both nutritional education and hands-on learning in core subject areas.
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Classes in the Garden

April 9, 2014 (West Hawaii Today)—Thanks to the hard work of teachers, families and friends, students at Waimea Middle School now have an outdoor garden classroom. As part of local efforts to connect Hawaii’s children with fresh and nutritious food, the volunteers helped build the new Malama Keiki Edible Garden, where students can pick fresh produce and learn how to prepare flavorful, healthy dishes in the school’s weekly health classes.
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Plant it Forward

March 5, 2014 (Big Island Weekly)—A growth spurt of school gardens on the Big Island may seem like a recent trend, but it’s a resurgence of something that was once a no brainer in Hawaii’s schools. Outdoor classrooms in the form of school gardens were commonplace in Hawaii’s schools until the late 1960s, yet somehow student gardens became far and few between for decades.
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