Help Rural Children Grow Their Own Food

The Nqolobane Garden is a 25m x 15m plot of land that is situated next to Nqolobane High in a valley surrounded by rolling hills and sugarcane fields as far as the eye can see. It is a place where learners in our After-school Programme come to learn, have fun and get their hands dirty (quite literally).

Last year, our Agriculture Director worked with a group of twenty-eight Grade 10 students to teach them a variety of organic gardening skills such as how to prepare soil, the value of crop rotation, and how to grown their own seedlings. The time they spent in the garden learning practical skills through our After-school Programme bolstered the theory they were learning in the classroom through Nqolobane High, and their efforts in both would be graded. 

To spice things up a bit, students were split into teams of four and each group was assigned one plot of land within the Nqolobane Garden. Each team grew the same crops - potatoes, beetroot, and carrots - and at the end of the school year, the group with the most successful plot of land received the highest marks for the project. Although all the teams did well, there was one clear winner...may we present to you the 2014 Nqolobane Gardening Champions!