Heirloom & Organic Gardening

About this course

This elective introduces an elementary student to gardening the old-fashioned way, with heirloom seeds and no chemicals. It begins with the seed itself -- what is packed inside one, what it needs to wake up, and why a bean seed always grows beans -- and then tells the stories behind real heirloom varieties like the Seminole Pumpkin, the Cherokee Purple tomato, and the Kentucky Wonder bean. From there your student learns that dirt is alive: earthworms, beetles, and the tiny creatures that turn dead leaves into food for plants. Later units cover mulch and wood chips as a blanket for the soil, building a compost pile with the right mix of browns and greens, growing zones and frost dates, planting and tending tomatoes, beans, and squash, the bees and butterflies and ladybugs that do so much of the work, how a flower turns into food, when and how to pick each kind of vegetable, and finally saving seed for next year and sharing the extra with neighbors and the church table. Each lesson opens with a verse from the King James Bible, and the ideas that come back again and again are God's design in a seed, patient work, thankfulness, and generosity.

This course adapts to where you live. The first time your student opens it, the course asks for your USDA plant hardiness zone, listed with familiar cities beside each one so it is easy to choose, and you can change it later. Six of the lessons -- the ones about zones, frost dates, choosing varieties, and planting from heirloom seed -- then show an "In Your Zone" section under the reading that gives the frost dates and planting months for your own region and names the heirloom varieties that have done well there for generations. A student in Minnesota and a student in Florida read the same lesson and get planting advice that actually fits their yard.

The course is 10 units of 10 lessons each, 100 lessons in all, self-paced rather than part of the daily schedule. A lesson is a short reading, usually 150 to 350 words in a few clearly headed sections, followed by a ten-question multiple-choice quiz that grades itself. The writing is aimed at a confident reader in grades 3 through 5, with plain sentences and terms explained the first time they appear, though a beginning reader may still appreciate having the lesson read aloud. No garden is required to finish the course and pass the quizzes. That said, this is a hands-on subject at heart, and much of it can be done small: seeds started in a cup on a sunny windowsill, a bucket of compost, saved pumpkin and bean seeds drying on a paper towel, worms watched in a corner of the yard. A few square feet of bed or a couple of large pots will turn most of these lessons into something your student can go outside and see. Frost dates, zones, and variety advice assume North America.

What the course covers

• What a seed is and what it needs to sprout
• Heirloom varieties and the families who saved them
• Soil life: earthworms, beneficial bugs, and worm castings
• Mulch, wood chips, and simple no-till layering
• Composting with browns and greens
• Growing zones, frost dates, and what grows where you live
• Planting and caring for tomatoes, beans, and squash
• Pollinators, ladybugs, and other garden helpers
• From flower to fruit, and knowing when to harvest
• Saving seed and sharing the harvest with neighbors and church

What your student will be able to do

• Plant a seed at the right depth and spacing and keep it watered
• Save and dry pumpkin, bean, and tomato seed for next spring
• Build and feed a simple compost pile with the right brown-to-green mix
• Recognize helpful garden insects and protect them without sprays
• Tell when a vegetable is ready to pick and harvest it properly
• Use frost dates to decide when it is safe to plant

Scope and sequence

All 10 units of Heirloom & Organic Gardening for Grade 4, in the order they are taught.

Inside the course

These photographs appear in the lessons themselves, not just on this page. Every one is freely licensed and credited to its photographer at the foot of this page.

Every lesson, by title

All 100 lesson titles are listed here — nothing is withheld until you download. Open a unit to read its contents.

One whole lesson, exactly as it comes

This is a real lesson taken from the middle of the course — the teaching text, the practice, the homework, and the first three quiz questions with their answers. It is not a marketing excerpt.

Unit 5: Compost — Turning Scraps Into Treasure · Lesson 1

What Is Compost?

What Is Compost? The Garden's Best-Kept Secret

Have you ever wondered where the best, richest soil comes from? Not from a store, not from chemicals, but from your own kitchen scraps and yard leaves? That's compost — and it's pure treasure.

Compost is what happens when you pile up things like food scraps, leaves, grass clippings, and plant trimmings, then let nature do the work. Tiny creatures and little helpers you can't see (and some you can, like earthworms) break all that material down into dark, crumbly, beautiful soil. It's not garbage — it's food for the earth, made from things most people throw away.

Why is compost so special? Because it gives your garden soil what it needs to grow strong plants. Good soil holds water like a sponge, feeds plants slowly and naturally, and keeps roots healthy. When you use compost, you don't need chemical fertilizers. You're giving your garden what it wants the way God designed it to work.

The cool part? You create compost yourself, right in your yard. You're not making something new — you're returning what came from the earth back to the earth, enriched and transformed. That's stewardship at its best.

The first three of this lesson's 10 questions

What is compost made from?

1. Food scraps, leaves, grass, and plant trimmings
2. Chemical powders and fertilizers
3. Only grass clippings
4. Sand and clay

Show the answer

Answer: Food scraps, leaves, grass, and plant trimmings

Who does most of the work turning compost into soil?

1. Tiny creatures and helpers you can't always see
2. The sun only
3. Rain alone
4. Farmer chemicals

Show the answer

Answer: Tiny creatures and helpers you can't always see

Why don't we need chemical fertilizers when we use compost?

1. Compost feeds plants slowly and naturally
2. Chemical fertilizers don't work
3. Compost is cheaper
4. Plants don't like any fertilizer

Show the answer

Answer: Compost feeds plants slowly and naturally

Another 7 questions follow in the lesson itself, each one graded the moment it is answered.

What you will need

Drawn from the materials named across all 100 lessons of this course. Most families already own most of it.