Schools

What to Do With 20 Tons of Compost?

Pupils at Our Community School are taking gardening class.

[This news release comes from Whole Foods and Our Community School.]

Whole Foods in Porter Ranch donated to Chatsworth's Our Community School (OCS)  to assist with the school's gardening program.  This past year OCS students were taught a comprehensive gardening class. 

According to Joyce de Brevannes at Whole Foods, “A big part of our community outreach at Porter Ranch is working with our neighboring schools. It’s been a true pleasure to help the garden at Our Community School grow. It’s such a treat to watch the kids getting excited about planting and a fun, hands-on way to help teach kids about healthy eating.  OCS is a terrific school and we look forward to doing more with them in the future.”

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This year, the charter school will be planting a Three Sisters Garden/Pumpkin Patch in which every class will participate. The school hopes to have representatives from local Native American tribes present. 

The Three Sisters Garden is a Native American growing style where corn, beans, and squash are believed to be the three inseparable sisters who only grow and thrive together. This tradition of interplanting corn, beans and squash in the same mounds, is a sophisticated, sustainable system that provided long-term soil fertility and a healthy diet to generations.  OCS will be planting pumpkins, corn and pole beans in varieties which each class has chosen. 

Find out what's happening in Northridge-Chatsworthwith free, real-time updates from Patch.

Erin Riley, garden coordinator, said “What the students sow now, at the end of the school year, will be ready to reap when the students return after summer and just in time for back-to-school and Halloween."

Chris Ferris, principal at  said, "I am so excited and I know the children are too, we are going to have pumpkins in our garden next fall! Thanks to Erin Riley and Whole Foods and Ira Harrison and the American fertilizer Foundation we have resources to put in a compost bin, add new dirt and fix our irrigation so the veggie gardens will be healthy all summer and we have our first ever pumpkin patch. “

Gardening plans for next year include a composting program and a California native garden/seed collecting garden.

For more information on Our Community School see ourcommunityschool.org.


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