After more than two months of watching their lettuce plants grow, students were thrilled when it was finally ‘Let us eat Lettuce Day’ at Majestic Elementary Arts Academy.

“I've been here for four years, and the lettuce here is always good,” one student said.

STEM teacher Meredith Llewellyn plants about three crops of lettuce each year, starting with seedlings. She said plants can go from ready-to-eat to going-to-seed in a week, so she tries to plan the planting schedule around school breaks.

Students say the lettuce they grow in the garden at school is more fresh and soft than the lettuce they eat at home. (Jet Burnham/City Journals)

For this first crop of the year, the seeds were planted in August. When students left for Fall Break in October, the lettuce sprouts were still just an inch tall, but when the kids came back a week later, the plants were about five inches taller.

“It does go from ‘There's not enough for 20 kids’ to ‘We need to eat it today,’” Llewellyn said. “They really do double in a week. Once they go beyond the seedling size, they double in height.”

When the plants were ready to eat the first week of November, many students ate it plain but they had the option of adding ranch dressing or lemon juice and salt. Some enjoyed it so much, they went back for a second helping.

“If there was, like, 100 of lettuce like these, they would all be gone,” a third grader said. “If I could, I'd have thirds. It’s super good and I love it. I've been in school for five years, and it's been amazing eating this lettuce."

One third grader said lettuce is one of his favorite vegetables and that the lettuce grown at the school is softer and “much fresher” than lettuce he eats at home.

Some students sing or read to the lettuce growing in their classroom to help it grow. Older students remember how that helped revive plants a few years ago when there was a power outage at the school over Christmas break.

The majority of students prefer to eat their lettuce with lemon juice and salt. (Jet Burnham/City Journals)

“We came back and everything was dead,” Llewellyn said. “And the kids sang to them, and our plants came back, and the kids were so excited it worked.” She said it probably also helped that the lights and watering systems started functioning again.

Each classroom at Majestic Elementary Arts Academy has its own tabletop hydroponic growing system so students can observe the plants growing.

“I don't know that any of them have gardens at home,” Llewellyn said. 

She uses the lettuce and other plants, which she grows in a large hydroponic garden, to teach science concepts.

Lessons involving plants coincide with each grade’s curriculum in some way. Younger students learn about the parts and life cycle of a plant.

“We grow kohlrabi for science purposes because it shows the root and the stem and it really demonstrates the plant so well so we can have that conversation as the plants grow and change,” Llewellyn said.

Older students learn about the value of volcanic rock, which is what their hydroponic seedlings are planted in.

“With fifth-graders, we talk about how volcanoes are important for our food production because they replenish the nutrients in the soil, and I let them hold the little fluffy pieces of spun volcanic rock which is compressed into a little brick, and that's what the seeds are grown in,” Llewellyn said.

Llewellyn hopes to grow--and the students hope to eat--at least two more crops of lettuce this school year.