Using ICT to plan your vegetable patch.

One activity that combines gardening, ICT and geography is the creation of plans for your vegetable patch.

A system that can be used effectively for the is GrowVeg. This is a web based system that allows children to easily draw up attractive plans. This has proved very popular in some schools and a school licence is available which allows a single account to be used by multiple pupils or groups of pupils in a class. This is basically the same as a single-user account but is marked for concurrent access. It costs £25 per year (which can be invoiced to the school if required). The teacher will usually set up the outline plan for the garden as a template that they then make a copy for each child/group to use. The pupils are all logged on to the same account but open the plan allotted to them so that they don't save over each other's work. Setting it up this way enables the teacher to log on and get access to all the pupils' plans after the class.

For several years now we have used this system to plan our allotment plots. A great feature of this system is that after you have used it for a year the it 'remembers' which crops were grown where in previous years and gives a warning if you try and plant something in a position that has been used for a similar crop in a previous year.

Where different groups of children are using the same gardening space in consecutive years or where members of staff change  it is essential that a plan is kept each year to avoid cultivation problems that may result in using the same area year after year for the same type of crop.

To read more about how we have used the system click here

For more links to the ICT curriculum click here