It’s official–it’s on the marquee.

Planted in June, these tomatoes will be ripening right on time.  For the month of September, we will be harvesting and eating all of our garden-grown beauties.

Arranged by school board member Mrs. Tellam, the Farm Stand in Escondido donated a box of Carolina Golds and Caro Rich that we took out to recess…….

…so that the Garden Ambassadors could run a taste test.  Our principal/superintendent Mr. Ogden is interacting with the kids, encouraging them to have a taste and exclaiming how delicious the tomatoes are!

The ambassadors always take a poll:  thumbs up or thumbs down.  (Only one reported thumbs down.)  They also asked the “tomato challenge”: letting kids know tomatoes don’t come from Italy (a common guess!) but from Central and South America.

We had some left over, so we put them in the front office so that kids, parents and staff could take one or two home.

Our brand new lunch menu has been featuring gorgeous local heirloom tomatoes so the hope is that all of this education will ultimately make kids more receptive to/excited about them when they see them on the salad bar.  Yum!