Before and after soil pots illustrating importance of soil organic matter. Some pots with glass sides that show root growth would be interesting. Always ready for harvest cycling radish and lettuce beds would be popular and expand some palates (let people pick and try a leaf of non-iceberg lettuce).

Keep it simple. Strawberries grow well and are always likeable. What a great project! Wow! Flowers are always fun to grow. Give them each some seeds to plant and let them learn how to water with little watering cans. They make tools and gloves now for little ones. Potatoes are fun if you have an outdoor space.

I would start with the soil chemistry and basics: WHAT DO PLANTS NEED TO GROW ?
-- Nutrients (N, P, K, Ca, Mg ...)
-- soil pH
--- Moisture (water )
-- Light (Sun or artificial)
--------

I'm a little confused. Who is taking this class (preparing for the growing season)?

If it is motivated adults, then I would focus on teaching them how to do what you do. Go over the materials you use (compost? fertilizers? seed starting mix?). Don't try to exlain everything about every material and all the theory and so-on, but just explain the general process.

Then show them how to do it, then make them do it. If they are motivated and taking the class because they are interested, they will pay attention when you talk, and you can expect them to have some patience and attention span.

But if it is 2nd-5th graders who are taking the class, that is a whole different story. You have to get them doing stuff right away or they will lose interest. I wouldn't try to teach them any theory beyond plants need three things: soil, water, and light. Get them mixing up potting mix or putting starter mix in flats or whatever you can think of. It is very easy to lose momentum, then they will start doing things that they think of themselves, then you can completely lose control of the direction of the class as you run around trying to stop kids from doing stuff you don't want them to do.

Good luck. I think you will have fun doing this.

--McKenzie

I would teach them to accept the limitation as a gardener and try to appreciate good weather more. There is only so much a man can do for his garden. If the students are young children then show them some videos of plants growing up cause that is very fascinating imo.

First, I would cover basic general soil food web, different types of soils, how these soils got created in the first place, and what is in these soils. You could make a few slides on the powerpoint to cover everything in not too long.. Second, show the audience how dramatic of a change gardening took in a century or so. We went from hand, to hand tools, to horse plow, to crop dusting and genetic manipulation. Explain the pros and cons on how traditional and both modern agriculture impacts the soil food web,etc. After that, teach them how they can improve these food webs, what they can do to better themselves, compost, organic matter, maybe get i to cover crops/green manures if you have the time.. Then, teach them when/how to grow common crops in your area. I think it is very important to make new growers, especially the youth, aware of the foundation of gardening, the root of life, the soil. It's important that they understand how the organisms in the soil interact with the plant. Because once they understand that they don't need to rely on synthetic plant fertilizers and the like, it will greatly help the health of all of us.

Or, if you want an easy way out, show them this video video below.

Or here's basically text of the video.

http://www.nrcs.usda.gov/wps/portal/nrcs/main/soils/health/biology/

The video/text is from a chief soil scientist at the USDA, Dr. Elaine Ingham.

Here is a link that might be useful: Great video to show the class, Soil food web

Teach about basic plant systems that helped American tribes survive before European contact -- the three sisters. They would plant patches of corn, squash/pumpkin, and beans that interacted in a mutual relationship. It produces pretty tasty crops and is proven successful. It's got a story involved that kids can be imaginative about. "The three sisters". It's also fun to see the variety of the plants that grow, and is a teaching point in itself. Cucurbits (living mulch, importance of mulch..), vining legumes (nitrogen and soil chemicals, ph, etc) and corn! (pollination, native grasses, they grow tall so it teaches kids about proportions, and most foods are made of corn, you can teach kids what corn truly is...)

There's a lot you can teach with those, but then also saving seed of any three of those plants is extremely easy so long as you originally use open pollinated, non-hybrid seed types. In the autumn, you can carve pumpkins and save the seeds to grow next year. Corn stalks are nice decoration and tillage and you have to just dry a cob to save seed. The beans are probably the simplest. Towards the end of the season, allow a few pods to remain on the bean vines until the vines are dead and the beans rattle in the pods. Then pick the pods and save the beans inside for planting next year.

I attached a link! I learned this in school when I was growing up because the town I live in has some known Native American history. The three sisters method grows perfect in my climate, and because you live further south on the coast, I imagine you should start your beans earlier or later, depending if you want early and late crops.

Here is a link that might be useful: three sisters story and instructions for growing

Another way is to teach them to get into internet, Google and read. Most basic gardening info is at the tip of your fingers.

winter sowing in milk jugs

There's a forum on winter sowing here on GW to get you started or go to wintersown.org.

Pros and cons of gardening...how certain vegetable plants need certain requirements for complete success.

If you want to email me I can email back all my class documents. I taught a complete class and a seed starting class and a getting more out of your existing garden class. This year I want to do a seed saving class.

Minnie- I would also be interested in that! Nancy

Bearfat- I'm still not sure who you are teaching? Kids or their teachers?
Kids LOVE projects! During the winter months, talk about composting and have the kids start collecting UCGs, leaves, grass clippings etc. Have them build a compost system. Get the little guys some WORMS! They will love that process! Hey! Where did that melon go????? The worms ate it! WooHoo!
If it's teachers, get the parents/families involved! We had a preschool parent who was a landscape contractor provide all of the plants/labor for a lovely yard!
Call your extension office for a master gardener to help out! I haven't taken the course yet, but MGs do need to put in a certain # of hours per year. There are also school garden projects with grants out there! Nancy

"The restaurant is having me teach a kitchen gardening class series to TRY and offset some of the money they're spending on the donation. "

How is this going to profit the restaurant?

OOOOOOOOOOOOHHH! I'm a technical writer, I've taught science, cooking, and gardening and other stuff.

My advice: skip the science and get right to the action by putting fast-growing seeds in dirt in pots, such as radishes and alyssum, some herbs known to thrive in your area herbs, such as basil, and some tomatoes because everyone likes tomatoes, and leaf lettuce and spinach.

Then you have something to tie each of the following lessons to, by relating it to THEIR plants.

Plant selection: Explain why you selected the seeds you selected, and what other plants would be growable. Explain the buy versus plant it yourself economy.

NOTE: You will have to explain seed catalog jargon. Posters would be nice for this.

NUTHER NOTE: Your classes will probably have a high proportion of people whose reading skills are low. Keep the text simple, but accurate. Short paragraphs, bullet lists, very blunt sentences. Keep the conditionals (you might, sometimes, maybe) out of the early handouts. Give them ONE method that works for your area instead of trying to expolain all the methods that might work.

Watering: How to test, best practices.

Thinning: How and why and when

Harvesting: How and when, how to extend the harvest.

Then get into site selection and preparation for THEIR growing situation, covering the common Baltimore situations and common soils.

I agree to some extent with lazygardener.
But the subject matter is too broad. It depend on the duration of these classes ; How many sessions? Who are the participants?

So to me you have to start with a brief introduction about plant life and soil chemistry in simple language first. Then get into a more practical aspects, like starting seeds and caring for it.

You wouldn't want to overload the information. Nowadays most people have access to internet. You can encourage hem to do some NET study if they really are serious about gardening. To me gardening is similar to swimming. You cannot teach in a classroom how to swim.

JMO

I agree totally with lazygardens - you need to hook people immediately with something practical and hands on. Maybe a vegetable id blind tasting or something. If you start with the soil science half of them will not be back the next week.

Since the OP has not returned there's not much to go on. All ideas are speculation without more info.

Can you provide specific websites for beginners. I have a kindergarten class, and I would like to introduce them to gardening with specific tasks. We have started some seeds in bags and we have a raise bed, but I want specifics on that thinning, watering, best seeds, etc. I live in Houston, Texas. We only have two more months of school, but I can dedicate some time everyday to this task.

Angela

Several HISD elementary schools have gardens, with teachers who have developed lesson plans and who have taught gardening basics to youngsters. If you call some of the area superintendent offices they can probably help by locating for you those schools/teachers and I'm sure they would be delighted to share their lesson plans and info with you.

Angela, I went to a workshop by author of Year-Round Indoor Salad Gardening. We planted a seed mix in soil with fertilizer using the disposable mini loaf pans. They need to be kept moist for a few days, covered by a layer of damp newspaper. This is sort of like micro greens. The seedlings have to be watered but essentially you have "salad" in 7-10 days. He mixed shredded carrot with the greens. Good way to introduce kids to salad, too.

teaching+gardening+to+kindergarten links

Dave

I have given some 2.5 hour lectures on home fruit growing in the past. They must have gone well as they asked me back two more times over the years. However, speaking from experience, I would not suggest lecturing for more than an hour or your class will soon get bored . For my lectures, I had no choice as the class was set up for a 2.5 hour period.

Leave lots of time for questions! I always tried to answer questions as I went along because if they wait until the end to ask you, they may have forgotten what their question was. Also, all can learn from the questions as you address them. The main issue is to have FUN, and invigorate the audience on what to do. Use some personal experiences about failures also as this always gets the crowd laughing when the supposed "professional" admits to some dumb idea he/she tried that turned out disastrous. I always tell them I hope they "learn from some of my mistakes".

Hello again:

Just an FYI that if any of you are grade school teachers, Bonnie Plants had a wonderful vegetable contest in which school teachers could apply and Bonnie Plants would send out some free cabbage plants to the class. When my daughter was in 3rd grade, I got her teacher on board with this program and it worked well. The kids took the plants home in April and posted pictures of their results by the end of August. It would be nice if the school gave a prize to the child with the biggest cabbage!

My wife is a 2nd grade teacher. I will repeat her story so any teachers out there will not repeat her mistake. Her class did a science segment on plants and then planted seeds using "a science plant kit" that the school had on hand. The kids were so excited but then dismayed when all was a failure.

Nothing came up that they planted. Other teachers at the same school had the same result. I was asked to find the problem. It turned out that the "kits" were 8 years old as they had been saved in storage. The seed was no longer viable but the teachers did not realize that. I felt sorry for the students.

That's a great story, NancyJane. Looks like you got the kids excited. Wish I could find a truckload of decent soil for $17.

Nitsua, if you are doing a volunteer project and you do facebook, I would post the request for a decent soil donation. If you are an individual looking for decent soil for your own garden, you might have luck with Craigslist. I was able to locate some beautiful composted horse manure that had kitchen scraps and bedding mixed in. Just this side of being soil. The horse owner charged $15 for him to load our utility trailer.

RHS School Gardening resources