The cooking proficiency of the grade 5s and 6s at Tullamarine Primary School would rival that of many adults.
The 12 and 13-year-olds prepared a meal of haloumi and sweet potato fritters with mint yoghurt dip and flat bread last week with produce they grew in the school’s vegetable patch.
Two years ago the school signed up to be a part of celebrity chef Stephanie Alexander’s kitchen garden program that teaches primary school pupils how to grow, harvest, prepare and share fresh, seasonal food to form a basis for positive lifelong eating habits.
Grade 5-6 teacher and program co-ordinator Margaret McPherson says the garden was created on a shoestring.
The school started with a $1000 donation from Nestlé and sold ice-creams to raise enough money to buy seeds.
She said time spent in the garden and cooking was now the pupils’ favourite time of the week.
“The idea is to expand the program to other year groups,” she said.
This month, the kitchen garden program achieved a milestone of operating in 10 per cent of all Australian primary schools – 800 in total – reaching about 100,000 children around the nation.
Between them, Hume and Whittlesea have 10 schools with their own kitchen garden.
Findon PS was the first to sign up in 2007, followed by Meadows PS in 2011, Tullamarine PS, Bethal PS, Coolaroo South PS in 2013 and Sirius College (Eastmeadows), St Francis of Assisi School and St Peter’s PS last year.
