The six primary schools in Belize that are part of Plenty’s GATE program are in full food-growing swing! The gardens are producing vegetables for the school lunch programs and are a great hands-on environmental learning lab for the kids. Being organic, the gardens also demonstrate alternatives to chemical pesticides and fertilizers.

The students at Barranco School in the coastal Garifuna village of Barranco show a strong interest in their garden. The soil needs a lot of organic matter, as their sandy soil does not hold moisture well. In discussion with the village garden specialist, Walter Medina, we found that the grass field in front of the school would soon be bush-hogged, and that was a good source of mulch/organic matter. In addition, March typically starts the time when seaweed washes ashore, which will be hauled on land, where it will get washed by the rain, and brought into the garden, both for its organic matter content, as well as the good micronutrients typically found in seaweeds. Students have harvested sweet peppers, tomatoes, and Chinese cabbage. Molly apple, Star fruit, and Breadfruit trees were planted outside the fenced in garden area.

Laguna Village School was having some bug problems, and the students began a “handpicking program” which was mostly successful at eliminating them. A spray of garlic was also used to fend off the smaller flying pests. Calaloo, cucumbers, beans, broccoli, okra, head lettuce, carrots, and Chinese cabbage have been harvested. The village and PTA are very happy with the gardening program, and have decided to expand the size of the garden. It is now approximately 50’ x 50’ — much larger than the 20’ x 20’ school gardens originally set up after Hurricane Iris! To help them with a successful expansion, we have been dropping off aged rice trash donated by the Belize Marketing Board as a soil additive. Breadfruit and Star fruit trees have also been planted around the Laguna school.

Breadfruit, Star fruit, and Star apple trees were planted around the San Pedro Columbia Village School. The teachers and students have put in a lot of effort to bring their garden back after previous soil loss due to erosion. Plenty helped with transportation of soil and rice trash during some of our visits. The students have started to understand the importance of terracing and of mulching. Tomatoes are growing well in the garden.

The kids at Golden Stream are very excited about their garden. They just harvested 26 heads of lettuce! As funding for their school lunch program is being cut short, the garden is taking a more important role in providing vegetables for the kids. The school is also operating a chicken-rearing project, and the manure from that is proving to be a great source of nitrogen for the garden. They would like to double the size of their garden. Breadfruit and Star fruit trees have been planted around the school here as well.

Chinese Cabbage and tomatoes have produced nicely in the garden at San Jose School. The school no longer has a village volunteer to oversee it, but having village Peace Corps volunteers Harry and Margy actively involved has helped make this garden work.

Mafredi Methodist School has a beautiful garden, under the expert “wing” of experienced local organic farmer Burton Caliz. This garden has fruit trees, papaya, pumpkin, calaloo, beans, mustard, cucumbers, and more.

Punta Gorda Methodist School has decided to “increase the availability of nutritional foods to our schoolchildren” as one of their main goals this year. They are also interested in starting a school garden. Being in town and on the sea, they have limited land space and poor soil. Raised beds and/or container gardening are most likely the best options for this school.

Link to previous GATE article, Winter 2002.
Link to next GATE article, Summer 2003