Seed to Table

Students at Maharishi School experience the possibilities of regenerative agriculture from their first day at preschool, until the day they graduate high school and move on to use and share that knowledge in their adult lives. The younger children are not even aware of what they’re absorbing as they watch strawberries grow right next to the jungle gym, water the kale, green beans, and tomatoes in the classroom garden, or wait for the cherries to turn bright red on the tree by the playground gate.  All they know is that these things are fun to share with friends and delicious!

As our students move up through the grades, their innocent love of growing things is cultivated in our Seed to Table Program. This curriculum is called Seed to Table because it begins in our 4,000 square foot greenhouse and ends in our classroom kitchen. What began as a school garden now stretches through all four seasons and over a variety of academic subjects with the help of our indoor and outdoor facilities.  

In late winter, classes visit our organic greenhouse to plant seeds and dream of spring. They watch those seeds grow over the weeks, then transplant the seedlings in the many campus gardens. Springtime also means watching the buds in our orchard bloom and be pollinated, and seeing the fruit set and grow as the weather warms.  Visits to the school food forest mean weeding and mulching with friends, picking berries and flowers, and chatting with the preschoolers who love to watch the “big kids” do their work.

Throughout the spring and summer, and into the fall, fruit, vegetables, herbs, and berries are harvested.  Students take their produce to our school kitchen, where they learn to cook and serve a variety of healthful and delicious meals. The scraps from the kitchen go into the compost bins next to the greenhouse, where they become the soil for next year’s seeds. 

Visit our Garden of Bliss blog for more stories and examples of our Seed to Table program.