📄 This is the print workbook (A4). Use your browser's Print → Save as PDF. It is designed to print clearly in black & white. — DRAFT for review.
Draft v1 · for review by Principal Westimika
Harlon Schools · Eastern Uganda · Grades 6–8
Our Schoolyard Can Feed Us
Student Food Garden Workbook
Learn It · Live It · Share It
Hello — I'm Coach Addison Konlan
PhD Student · Force for Health Fellow · Your Garden Guide
This workbook is yours. Write in it, draw in it, and take it to the garden. Wherever you see my face, I'm sharing a tip to help you grow food for your family while our schools are closed. Let's grow this together.
This workbook belongs to:
Name
Class / Grade
My garden team-mates
Date I started
Why This Matters Right Now
Schools are closed because of the Ebola outbreak in our region. Staying home keeps us safe — but it also means markets are closing and food is harder to get. Our schoolyard has space. We have seeds. We have hands. If we work together, we can grow enough food to feed our families, with a little extra to preserve or share.
Ebola Safety in the Garden — Read First
Tick each box once you understand the rule. Working in the garden is safe when you follow these:
Wash hands with soap and water before and after garden work. No soap? Use ash and water, then rinse well.
Do not touch your face while working in the garden.
Do not handle sick or dead animals. Tell a trusted adult.
Work in small groups of 2–3. Keep distance from others.
If you feel sick — fever, weakness, headache — tell a trusted adult and stay home.
Wash all vegetables well and cook food fully before eating.
Coach Addison says
Safety first
Read these out loud with your group before you pick up a hoe. Ebola does not travel through vegetables or soil — the garden is one of the safest places to be. Clean hands and a little distance protect everyone.
Write your own words
Name one safety rule and explain why it matters to your family:
Pillar One
Learn It — Our Crops & Our Soil
We chose four crops that grow well in Eastern Uganda's red volcanic soil, survive on rainfall, and feed us quickly.
Crop
Time to harvest
Why we grow it
Maize
90–120 days
Rows 75cm apart. Intercrop with beans. Dries and stores for months; makes posho.
Beans
60–90 days
Plant between maize rows. Fix nitrogen to feed the maize. High in protein. Dry beans store 6–12 months.
Cassava
Leaves in 3 months; tubers 8–18 months
Plant stem cuttings. Eat the leaves as greens early. Drought-resistant — the most reliable crisis food.
Sweet Potato
3–5 months
Plant vine cuttings in mounds. Leaves edible within weeks. Rich in Vitamin A for children.
Preparing the soil — the key steps
Clear weeds (keep them for compost) · Dig one hoe-depth (≈25cm) · Make compost from scraps, peels, grass & ash · Water maize every 3–4 days when young, in the morning · Use raised beds in heavy rain.
Quick Check — answer in your own words
1. Which crop can you eat from soonest, even before harvest?
2. Why do we plant beans between the maize rows?
Coach Addison says
A grower's secret
Sweet potato and cassava leaves are food too — long before the roots are ready. Plant something you can eat early, and your family never waits empty-handed for the big harvest.
Pillar Two · Live It
Simulation 1 — The Planting Decision
Coach Addison says
Before you decide
No trick questions. Read each scene, picture yourself in the schoolyard, and tick the choice you would really make. Then check what I'd do.
Scene 1 of 3 · Where to start
School is closed. You and three friends meet at the gate. The schoolyard has a large area in full sun and a smaller shaded area near the classrooms with a tap nearby. You have energy to start one area today.
Which area do you start with?
A) The large sunny area — maize and beans first.
B) The shaded area — easier to water from the tap.
C) Split up — two of us in each area.
Coach Addison's answer
Choose A. Maize and beans need 6+ hours of direct sun. Carrying water to the sunny bed is worth a much bigger harvest. (+10 coins)
Scene 2 of 3 · How to arrange the planting
You have maize seeds, beans, cassava cuttings and sweet potato vines, and one morning of energy before the heat.
How do you arrange your planting today?
A) Maize + beans in alternating rows; sweet potato mounds along the edge; cassava in its own bed tomorrow.
B) Plant everything together today.
C) Only maize today; everything else next week.
Coach Addison's answer
Choose A. Intercropping maize and beans lets the beans feed the maize. Mixing all crops in one bed makes them fight for light and nutrients. (+10 coins)
Scene 3 of 3 · Heavy rain
Three weeks later, heavy rain leaves standing water between the bean rows. Standing water can rot the roots within two days.
What do you do?
A) Dig small drainage channels now to lead the water away.
B) Wait a few days for the sun to dry it.
C) Pull up and replant the worst seedlings on higher ground.
Coach Addison's answer
Choose A. Bean roots rot without oxygen in about 48 hours. A channel takes 20 minutes and saves the crop. (+10 coins)
Pillar Two · Live It
Simulation 2 — Harvest During the Outbreak
Coach Addison says
This one is hard
This story involves a sick family member. It is heavy and real. There is no shame in any feeling you have. We protect everyone's safety and care for our family — both can be true at once.
Scene 1 of 3 · A sick uncle
The maize is ready. But your uncle, who helped plant, now has a fever and is resting inside. It is not confirmed what illness it is.
How do you handle the harvest?
A) Harvest carefully without him; wash hands well; report his illness to the health worker today.
B) Wait until he recovers before harvesting.
C) Ask him to supervise from the doorway.
Coach Addison's answer
Choose A. Keep a possibly-sick person away from food, and report early — early reporting saves lives. (+10 coins)
Scene 2 of 3 · More than you can eat
You have 40kg of fresh maize — more than your family can eat before it spoils. Three families on your road have nothing ready yet. Markets are closed.
What do you do?
A) Keep a week's worth; sun-dry the rest now; share some with the struggling families.
B) Keep all of it for your own family.
C) Grind it all into posho flour now.
Coach Addison's answer
Choose A. Fresh maize spoils in 1–2 weeks anyway. Preserve early and share — a community that helps each other survives a crisis better. (+10 coins)
Scene 3 of 3 · The tubers aren't ready
Sweet potato tubers need 4–5 months and it has been 3. Your little brother is hungry now. The vines are lush and green.
What do you harvest?
A) Pick young leaves and shoots today — only a third per plant — and leave the tubers to grow.
B) Dig up a few whole plants to check the tubers.
C) Wait the full 5 months; the leaves are not real food.
Coach Addison's answer
Choose A. Sweet potato leaves are rich in Vitamin A and iron. Taking a third barely disturbs the plant — food today and tubers later. (+10 coins)
Pillar Two · Live It
Simulation 3 — Preserving Our Food
You have no electricity or refrigeration — but you have sun, fire, smoke, and sometimes salt. Write the best preservation method for each food in the blank column, then check against the key below.
Food
Your best method
How long it lasts
Beans (5kg dried)
Maize (shelled grain)
Cassava (fresh roots)
Fish / meat (fresh gift)
Coach Addison's answer key
Beans: sun-dry fully, store sealed with a little wood ash — 6–12 months. Maize: sun-dry on the cob, shell, store with wood ash — 6–12 months. Cassava: peel, slice thin, sun-dry into chips (or ferment into gari) — 6–12 months. Or leave roots in the ground. Fish/meat: smoke over a hardwood fire 4–8 hours, or salt + sun-dry — 2 weeks to 3 months.
Coach Addison says
Now you're the expert
Sun drying is your most powerful tool — free, no equipment, works for everything. Smoking is best for fish and meat. Salt is a multiplier when you have it. Always dry maize fully — undried maize can grow dangerous mould.
Pillar Three
Share It — Draw Your School Garden Map
Here is an example layout. Below it, draw the map of your school compound: show the sunny beds (maize + beans), cassava, sweet potato mounds, the water source, the compost corner, and an arrow for North.
Now draw your own:
draw your school garden here
Pillar Three
Share It — Teach One, Cook One
Teach one neighbour this week
Choose one preservation method and show someone how to do it — don't just tell them. Then write their name and what you taught:
I taught (name):
I showed them how to:
Recipe Card — Dried Bean & Cassava Leaf Stew
Feeds 4 · Uses garden ingredients · No market needed
What you need:
2 cups dried beans (soaked overnight) · 1 handful young cassava leaves (washed) · 2 tbsp oil or groundnut paste · 1 onion · a pinch of salt · water
How to make it:
1. Soak beans overnight; drain and rinse. 2. Boil beans 45–60 min until soft. 3. Pound or finely chop cassava leaves to remove bitterness; rinse. 4. Fry onion in oil; add leaves, stir 5 min. 5. Add beans and some bean water; simmer 15 min. 6. Add a pinch of salt; serve with posho or cassava.
Why it's good: beans give protein like meat; cassava leaves give iron and vitamins. A complete meal from our garden.
Coach Addison says
The harvest that grows
When you teach one neighbour what you know, you double the food your community can grow. Knowledge is the one harvest that grows bigger every time you give it away.
My Garden Coins & Pledge
Add up your Garden Coins from the Live It simulations (up to 10 per scene). Colour one circle for every 10 coins you earned:
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
90
100
My total Garden Coins:
My Pledge
I, ___________________________________, will use what I have learned to help grow food for my family, harvest safely, and teach one other person what I know.
Signed
A word from Coach Addison & Principal Westimika
Harlon Schools
Our schools are closed, but our learning never stops. The knowledge in this workbook will protect your family during this outbreak and for your whole life. You are a Force for Health. When our gates open again, bring what you have learned back to school.