Amid lockdown, this school cultivates vegetables

Despite lockdown, the Upgraded Model Higher Primary school at Suribailu in Kolnad in Bantwal taluk has successfully cultivated a variety of vegetables.

The school premises is filled with greenery and has been attracting the attention of onlookers from far and wide.

Due to the efforts of the school's development committee and a team of teachers, the vegetable gardens had been developed despite the lockdown.

In the 25 cents land belonging to the school, long yard beans, red okra, white okra, bottle gourd, snake gourd, ash gourd, pumpkin, harive, sweet potato, tapioca, cucumber, bitter gourd, ginger, turmeric, banana, pineapple and tomato have been cultivated.

“We cultivate almost all the vegetables and locally available fruits that are in the market. Every year, it is the students, SDMC members and teachers who were nurturing the plants. Owing to the closure of schools, we decided to take up cultivation with the help of teachers. Accordingly, seeds of vegetables were sown in June,” said school development committee president S M Aboobakkar.

The vegetables cultivated were used for mid-day meals during the school period. Now, it will be sold to the shops.

The school already has arecanut trees on 1.5 acres of land and fetches more than 1.50 lakh income annually.

It all begun with agriculturalist S M Aboobakar adopting the school in 2010 under the school adoption programme. There are more than 400 arecanut trees and over 40 coconut trees in the land belonging to the school.

The school is also known for its rainwater harvesting system. The water from the school rooftop flows into a well which is 60-foot deep and 13-foot wide. A purification tank with the capacity to store 50,000 litres is constructed in the school to collect water from the roof. This water is then channelled to the well.

Headmaster Gopal S said that the school in the past had won Swaccha Vidyalaya, Hasiru Shaale and Jilla Parisara Prashasti.