M.Sc.

A school vegetable garden is an educational strategy to attract students towards
gardening activities. The garden engages students by providing a dynamic environment
where they can observe, discover, experiment, nurture, and learn. It provides
opportunities for young minds to understand the basic lessons of agriculture and
develop an affinity towards it. Kerala state Department of Agriculture Development
and Farmers’ Welfare has been implementing school vegetable garden programme
under ‘Vegetable Development Programme’ with the major objectives to mobilize the
student community into the field of agriculture and to make them aware of safe to eat
food production.
With this background, the present research was undertaken to explore the
effectiveness of school vegetable garden as perceived by students, school authorities
and extension personnel. The knowledge level and attitude of students were studied
along with their association with personal and socio economic characteristics. The
impact of school vegetable garden on food consumption pattern of students was also
analyzed.
The study was carried out in Nenmara and Kollengode blocks of Palakkad
district. One school each was chosen from the three selected panchayats of each block.
The six panchayats were Nenmara, Pallasana, and Elavanchery from Nenmara block
and Koduvayur, Muthalamada, and Vadavannur from Kollengode. Two stage random
sampling procedure was adopted. The respondents included 30 students and one
teacher each from six schools, three extension personnel each from six panchayats and
30 parents and thus making the total sample size to 234.
All the selected schools had functional school vegetable gardens and were
practicing activities either through agriculture or nature clubs. The perceived
effectiveness of school vegetable garden by teachers and extension personnel revealed
that improvement in environmental stewardship was found to be the most important
outcome while the development of life skills was perceived as most significant by the
students. The knowledge and attitude towards school vegetable garden were at medium
level for majority of the students. Among the personal and socio-economic
characteristics studied, participation in extracurricular activities displayed the highest
positive correlation with both knowledge and attitude. Age and social orientation had
positive correlation with both knowledge and attitude while students’ class of study
and extent of volunteering were positively correlated with knowledge and achievement
motivation with attitude.
Kruskal Wallis H test was employed to identify the group variability among
schools for knowledge level, attitude and perceived effectiveness .The results indicated
significant variation among schools with respect to knowledge and attitude while no
remarkable difference was observed for perceived effectiveness. Regarding the career
aspirations of students, majority opted for science education.
The perceived changes in preference in food consumption were also studied.
Preference towards leafy vegetables was perceived as the greatest felt change. Among
the vegetables, potato was the most consumed one (97.98 %) and least consumed was
colocasia (41.76 %).After involving in school vegetable garden, students showed a
slight increase in consumption of amaranthus and solanaceous vegetables. It was found
that all the students involved in school vegetable garden were maintaining a home
garden with a few vegetable crops. The major vegetables in the home gardens were
chilli, brinjal, vegetable cowpea and amaranthus.
The most important benefits perceived by parents due to the involvement of
children in vegetable garden were improvement in environmental stewardships and
personal development. The constraints faced by students were about the time spent for
garden activities and difficulty in maintaining during vacation. While inadequate fund
was the major constraint faced by the teachers, the extension personnel felt the scarcity
of land for cultivation as the most important one.