The project provides students with a much-needed glimpse of how food gets to their tables. "They think stuff grows in the grocery store," says Williams' K­3 science teacher Jeanne Lichtenstein.

Williams parent and volunteer gardener Ilene Uyesugi says many students have no concept of how vegetables are prepared for consumption. "One student asked me why we were growing so many ferns," she recalls. "I had to tell her it was asparagus."

Through the gardening project, students discover exactly what parts of a plant are edible. Since they grow both vegetables and flowers, they also learn the differences between seeds and bulbs, as well as which soil type is best suited for each.

The garden's lessons are societal as well as scientific. Using funds from the Governor's Office on Service and Volunteerism (GO SERV), the San Jose Unified School District awarded Williams a $2,000 Cesar Chavez grant to get the project under way. This year, GO SERV awarded nearly $5 million in grants to 66 service projects throughout the state to commemorate Chavez, founder of the United Farmworkers Union.

Under the terms of the grant, teachers use students' gardening experience to help them understand what compelled Chavez to organize farm workers to push for better working conditions.

"It's laborious, intensive work. These kids don't get that," Uyesugi says. "You will get dirt under your fingernails."

Before farm workers unionized, Lichtenstein says, "they had no bathrooms. They couldn't take water breaks. We ask the kids, 'Could you do this for 10 to 12 hours a day?'"

Lichtenstein is asking students to spend an hour or two each week tending to the garden, either before or during school hours. When the inaugural planting was done last year, different classes were responsible for different sections of the garden. Now, however, the garden is open to the whole school.

"We're striving to have at least one garden participant from each class," Lichtenstein says. "We were going to use (the project) as part of the science curriculum, but the teachers wanted it as a separate thing. There are times I'll be using it in my curriculum because it's part of what I'm already teaching."

"Our hope is to turn this into more of a school community garden to allow all students to utilize it," Uyesugi says. "We really want kids to take ownership of it."

The young gardeners will also be able to decide what to do with the food they grow. Williams Principal Sue Walker says students will be asked to vote on whether they want to donate some of the vegetables of their labor to the Second Harvest Food Bank.

Uyesugi is looking for more parent volunteers to open the garden in the mornings so students can weed, water and harvest the vegetables and flowers before school hours. She says parents have done some of the weeding themselves, but students are handling the bulk of the work, with adult supervision. She hopes to find enough student and parent volunteers to keep the garden active during the summer months.

Another requirement of the Cesar Chavez grant was that Williams involve the community in its garden project. To that end, the school solicited a donation of compost from Valley Pride and discounts from the Summerwinds Nursery on plants and gardening tools. Lichtenstein is in the process of procuring bins so students can do their own composting.

"I know I could use the worm bin in my science curriculum," she says. "Future plantings will concentrate more on seeds to keep costs down and so kids will see the (germination) process."

While some students may balk at the idea of worm-wrangling, Lichtenstein says most of her young charges enjoy the more tactile aspects of gardening. "They love to get their hands dirty," she adds. "They're learning by doing."