Planting bulbs at the right depth.

Watering the plants.

Working together in the school garden.

Melody R. Coco, the nutrition assistant for the Southern University AgCenter in Avoyelles Parish, discussed the importance of eating your vegetables to the Pre-K classes in Avoyelles during March 2011.

This presentation helped the children understand how important it is for you to have a particular number of servings of vegetables a day and what particular vegetables should be in your diet every week:

• 3 cups of greens
• 2 cups of orange
• 3 cups of legumes
• 3 cups of starchy vegetables
• 6 1/2cups of other vegetables

Melody explained how much fun and how much money is saved when you plant your own vegetable seeds and watch them turn into plants that produce the vegetables to eat.

Melody and the children then planted vegetable seeds at the children's schools. By the end of March 2011, about 350 children had planted vegetables at school and had seedlings to take home.

Follow up conversations with the children’s teachers confirmed that the seeds had sprouted and that the children were excited to take their seedlings home and plant them.