Justin Smith
Snapshot
Mountains of Produce: Raised Bed Gardens
Using the grant funding, our agriculture students would plan, prepare, and maintain two raised bed gardens. Here in Eastern Kentucky, we are used to making the most out of what we have. These raised bed gardens will be a cheap, but innovative way to raise a vegetable crop in any location. The topography of our region is not always the greatest for production agriculture. These raised bed gardens will give students a hands-on learning experience that they can use outside the classroom. Regardless of what career path they eventually choose in life, knowing how to grow your own food is valuable for many reasons. Students will learn how to plant vegetable crops, how to properly water plants, best management practices for pests, when to plant and harvest, how to market and seH produce, and how to plan and setup a garden. With Covid-19 still looming over us for this year, I realize that having students in person may be a challenge. I still think we would be able to work out a schedule where students could come work on our raised bed gardens on certain days so numbers would be low and we could follow al] guidelines. During my student teaching experience, I regularly had zoom pulled up on my cell phone and took both the in person and virtual students out to the greenhouse to have class. I believe this raised bed project would be a great resource for our students and beneficial to the community in Floyd County. I also believe it will still be very manageable even if our school schedule must change due to Covid. This project will allow students to take ownership of their learning process as they control which vegetables we grow and how we market and sell our produce.