Curriculum
Connections
Five
Container Projects
Looking for ideas
to get your students' feet wet before they fashion their own bountiful
containers? Here are a few ideas to whet their appetites:
Edible
Flower Planter
Something about the idea of eating flowers delights many youngsters.
Have students search for a hanging basket or other container about
16 inches in diameter. Next, obtain nasturtium seeds (trailing or
compact varieties), a calendula plant, a chive plant, and 3 violas
or pansies. Put the plants into the soil mix (or the sphagnum moss
in a hanging basket) with the taller chives and calendula in back.
Sow compact nasturtiums in the middle of the container or trailing
types on the sides and front. Students can eat their harvest of petals
on salads made with their own greens, use them as decorations for
cakes or cupcakes, or sell them to raise money for their garden.
 A
Stack of Potatoes
If you're studying asexual reproduction in plants, consider the
humble potato. Find a well-drained container that's at least 30 inches
deep; a barrel, trash can, or stack of tires will do. Put in about
a foot of moist soil, compost, or soil mix and lay potato seed pieces,
cut sides down, on top. As the potatoes sprout and grow, students
should mulch the shoots with more soil mix, sawdust, or straw. Have
your keen observers try to figure out where the potatoes will form.
(They form above the original "seed piece.") It's important
to keep the tubers covered, because if they are exposed to the sun,
they may turn green, which indicates the presence of toxic solanine.
When the foliage turns brown, dig in or turn the barrel on its side
and pour out the contents.
An alternate method is to fill one tire with growing media, plant
the potato pieces and cover them with a few inches of soil or straw.
As soon as the green sprouts are six inches above the tire rim, add
another tire and fill it half full of soil mix or straw. Continue
adding tires and covering potatoes in this manner through the growing
season.
Salsa
to Go
A 3-foot-wide container or several smaller ones can bring a salsa
garden to life. As students research the crops and their uses in Mexican
culture, they can also learn about traditional designs and paint their
containers accordingly. You can start cilantro from seed in early
spring and reseed it throughout the season as the plants get rangy.
Also include a medium-size tomato plant, a hot pepper (jalapeño
or chile), chives or onion sets, and garlic chives.
Aromatic
Herb Pillow
For a no-muss method of growing an herb garden, you can use a
medium size bag of potting soil. Start with small pots of five herb
plants that you've grown, dug, purchased, or had donated. Here are
some good candidates: basil, chive, mint, parsley, sage, dill, French
tarragon. Lay the bag on its side and use a marker to make an x for
each herb plant, offset in two rows. Use scissors to cut a hole on
each x. Wet the soil under each hole, move some soil aside —
or remove a bit, if necessary — and place each plant in one of
the holes. Leave the bag in a sunny location. To keep things neat,
don't put in drainage holes. Instead, drip water into each hole only
when the plants are close to wilting. After a month, add some fertilizer.
Students can use their aromatic harvest for cooking, dips, teas, and
herb vinegars.
 Half-Barrel
Water Garden
A watertight half whiskey or wine barrel makes a great home for floating
and submerged aquatic plants. Since these tubs are not all
watertight, many gardeners line them with heavy black plastic or a
flexible PVC liner (available at home stores or garden suppliers).
Fill your barrel with water and let it sit for a couple of days to
let chlorine evaporate. Visit a nursery that has water garden supplies
to find out what types of plants they carry. These make good companions:
a Japanese iris, cardinal flower, clump of parrot's feather, one shellflower,
and three water hyacinths. Put the cardinal flower, iris, and parrot's
feather in soil mix in plastic or terra-cotta pots at least 6 inches
in diameter and cover the soil surface with gravel or pebbles. Submerge
the containers in the water-filled barrel. Float the water hyacinths
and other surface plants on the water. Don't fret if the water turns
green at first from algae that are nourished by dissolved nutrients.
It should eventually clear. If you want to add gold fish, you can
add oxygen by putting in a small submersible pump. For more tips,
click to this article: Making
a Water Garden in a Tub.
 Cultivating
Inquirers
Your
container-growing ventures can inspire a variety of student investigations
and problem-solving challenges. Start by discussing how life might
differ for a plant grown in a container and one grown in the garden.
Ask, In each context, how are a plant's basic needs met? What
implications might this have for how we nurture confined plants? How
can we address some of the challenges of growing in containers? What
others questions do we have? How can we test some of our ideas? Consider
having groups of students develop proposals for investigations, share
them with you and peers, and get feedback on their plans before proceeding.
Here are some sample investigations:
-
Experiment
with different types of soil mixes for containers. Students might
ask, for instance, Does lettuce grow larger or faster and/or
taste better when raised in a soilless mix, potting mix with worm
castings, or garden soil?
-
Explore
whether container-grown foods differ in taste from those grown in
the garden.
-
Design
a system to ensure that container plants receive the water they
need when school is out of session.
-
Figure
out how to plant a barrel of pizza and have all ingredients ready
to harvest at the same time, or how to grow box of flowers that
bloom simultaneously.
-
Estimate
the volume of soil mix needed for a specific container based on
its dimensions.
-
Figure
out if moving plants in containers to "follow" sunshine
increases the growth rate or health of plants.
-
Compare
how different types of container materials and setups affect the
growing environment: soil temperature, moisture, drainage, and so
on.
- Build a container
garden that is accessible to students in wheelchairs.
- Design and create
a container garden that allures and provides nourishment to butterflies
and their larvae.
Creative
Container Contest! 
Consider challenging small groups of students or different classes
within the school to design unique container gardens from recycled
materials. You may want to develop a list of criteria to guide the
process. For instance, Each garden must . . . use recycled containers,
have a specific theme, have a system for supplying water over a long
weekend, be artistically creative, and so on. If you hold
a Clever Container Garden Festival, teams of students, teachers, and/or
community members can serve as judges, or each student can judge all
of the entries. You and your students can work  together
to develop a rubric for "scoring" each category. In addition
to recognizing entries that meet or exceed your criteria, the judges
might create special awards so all container garden creators are recognized.
For instance, judges might create an award for the most unique
container, the widest range of colors, the best smelling arrangement,
and so on. Don't forget to invite the local press or TV
station to your event to drum up interest and support for your school
garden project. The cleverly constructed gardens could stay on display
in the schoolyard, or be auctioned off to community members to raise
money for garden-related materials or projects.
Copyright© 2003
National Gardening Association
Growing Ideas Classroom Projects is a benefit for NGA's Members
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