Programme offering primary schools free fruit and veg

WICKLOW PRIMARY school pupils are being offered free fruit and vegetable growing kids as part of the annual Innocent Big Grow initiative.

Now in its eighth year, the programme is designed to encourage pupils to take an interest in growing fresh produce.

It is estimated that Wicklow kids will form part of the 56,000 who will learn to grow their own food this spring.

GIY and Innocent drinks have launched the eighth annual food growing initiative, a project that will enable 56,000 primary school children across the country to The 2019 initiative is now open for Primary schools across the country to apply for a free Big Grow pack to be delivered to their school via innocentbiggrow.com. This year the pupils will learn how to grow peas, cress and tomatoes.

Each Big Grow pack includes enough soil, growing pots, seeds for a class of thirty along with an expert food growing kit devised by GIY plus details on how to cook and eat the produce that each child has grown.

The campaign has been developed closely with teachers and educational specialists to develop a series of detailed lesson plans that provided credible and engaging content for teachers to use in the classroom. It will encourage a knowledge of where food comes from, teaching children through a fun, free, learning experience just how easy it is to grow their own greens and enjoy the taste of their own food.

It will also drive a series of learning as once schools are registered they can keep a growing blog online and for every school that does, they receive a Big Grow certificate but the most engaged or the ‘Best’ Big Grow school will win a trip to Bloom for their class, a trip to Dublin Zoo and €500 worth of gardening equipment for the school; the winning school will be presented with their prizes at Bloom 2019 hopefully by the President. Two runners-up prizes of a €300 and a €200 GIY voucher are also up for grabs.

Visit innocentbiggrow.com to register for a free Innocent and GIY Big Grow pack which includes everything a class of 30 needs to get growing, this includes seeds for peas, cress and tomatoes, sowing cups, compost, a teacher’s resource booklet, a wall chart to map weekly growing successes, veggie stickers and a ‘Star Grower’ badge for those top growers.