Young cultivators in Bailieborough

Four students in Bailieborough Community School have begun cultivating their own produce in a bid to deter unnecessary food imports in their hometown and beyond.

Daire Conlan, Shane O'Brien, James Mulligan and Andrew Carolan have started lasagne gardening on a small patch of land within the school grounds. The students are hoping that their efforts will promote sustainability further afield. Word of their efforts spread to Junior Minister Niamh Smyth's office right down to Minister of State at the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine, Deputy Michael Healy Rae, both of whom are impressed with the project.

Green shoots

The quartet are hopeful of securing a place at the upcoming Young Environmentalist Awards.

They are using a relatively unknown method of gardening, known as lasagne gardening, to grow their produce.

“It's a method that you don't have the dig up the soil every time you're doing it. You have to dig it up at first and then flip the soil over,” James said, describing how they then put “cardboard” and “compostable items” on the soil.

“The weeds don't grow up, so you just cut the cardboard and put a seed in and a plant will grow out of it.”

Shane described how they wanted something that was “quick” to set up. After research, he found the lasagne method.

Digging deep

“Usually you need to dig and get every weed out and it would take a while. We needed something that we could plant stuff in fairly quick for the competition.

“You layer material on that's why it's called lasagne gardening. I hadn't heard of it before but there's a few people doing it. We're trying something new.”

He said “anyone” can do lasagne gardening.

“It's very easy to set up on a small space as well, you can set it up in your back garden and you'll have vegetables if you look after it.”

With garlic already set, the students intend on planting broad beans, radish, lettuce and potatoes later in the year.

The group also intends on creating a lazy bed to plant potatoes in.

Meath man Shane describes how this method involves planting potatoes “above ground” giving “good drainage”.

Boost

“When you harvest the potatoes, because they're real dense leaves, they kill out any weeds and then you've clear ground for your next crop.”

Shane agreed that it is more rewarding to grow vegetables as opposed to buying them.

“They taste better when you've grown them yourself and they're cheaper too.”

Daire chimes in, saying it “morale boosting” to grow vegetables yourself.

For now, with the foundations laid on their project, it's a waiting game for the young cultivators.

They explained what issues they hope their project will tackle. Each of the students come from a farming background and are well aware of how their food comes to plate. Using this knowledge, they decided to try and buy less and grow more.

“There's huge emissions caused by food miles coming in so we decided we'd produce our own food here at the school for the students.”

The boy’s teacher Daire Donohoe says the group are “real go-getters”.

“They're great,” he said.