Be part of the Big Grow
By Ellen O'Regan
The Big Grow is back for its tenth year, helping primary school kids to get growing their own veg.
This year, 200,000 kids will be learning how to grow their own food, adding to the 1.5 million across Britain and Ireland who’ve already joined the Big Grow.
Innocent and Grow It Yourself (GIY) are inviting primary teachers to sign up for free food growing classroom kits. The kit comes with five packs of different seeds, compost, growing cups, instructions, and fun lesson plans for the entire class. The kits will be sent out once everyone’s back in classrooms and just in time to start the growing season.
Speaking of the ten year anniversary and the launch of the 2021 initiative, founder of GIY Michael Kelly said: “We are so proud to have reached a ten year milestone of helping children to grow food at school with innocent through The Big Grow. When we began this initiative a decade ago, it was a novel concept and some might have thought it wouldn't catch on.
“But the feedback we get from the schools, teachers and most importantly the children who take part every year re-affirms that this initiative works, be that in urban, rural or city centre schools.”
Each school taking part can share their experiences online, to be in with a chance to be crowned The Big Grow Champs 2021, and win a school garden revamp.
Last year’s winners St Patrick’s Boys and Girls Primary School in Galway, shared their top tips to success:
1. Start a gardening club and make gardening and growing food accessible to everyone in the school. Many hands make light work!
2. Look at everything that you have in a new way - all containers can become pots for growing. Find, forage and re-use.
3. Prepare your soil. Gather all of the leaves from the playground and create a compost heap for mulch to ‘feed’ your garden soil nutrients. And if your school is by the sea collect some seaweed on your next nature walk for fertilizer!
4. Create a rain catcher. We love to collect as much rainwater as we can to water our garden and keep our garden and the environment green.
5. Make a sensory map of your garden so that visitors can follow it, learn about all the plants that we grow and how they appeal to our five senses. This also makes gardening and visiting a garden lots more fun for those with additional needs.
Teachers can sign up for a free food growing kit at innocentbiggrow.com. Registration is still open while stocks last, and kits will be sent once schools doors are open again based on Government guidelines.