This is a post by Liz Kenny, a student at Woburn High School and a member of her school’s Action Club, Students Toward a Greener Earth (STAGE)

It’s that time of year again; there’s a fresh round of suckers to be picked, those little yellow flowers are starting to blossom into little green tomatoes, and I better find my twine because those plants are getting big and it’s time to tie them up—that’s right, it’s summer time.

It seems like forever ago that I saw my first ACE presentation—I think I was still a poor little freshman—and this makes it even weirder that somehow as a junior I managed to become president of STAGE (Students Towards A Greener Earth), our school’s environmental club. ACE has helped us out with many of our projects, and it has been over a year since they first awarded us with the original grant to start a school garden.

Some of STAGE’s past members who have moved on to college attended one of those super-fun leadership conferences that ACE throws and managed to get us the chance to try our hands at tomatoes. Before we knew it, spring had come and we were having regular meetings with our school’s wood shop teacher who was overseeing the building of the raised beds and we were looking into the prices of soil and compost. Our little tomato plants were getting bigger by the day and then as soon as the planting beds were finished, those plants were ready for business. Over the summer, the planters, with six tomato plants each, provided us with a steady stream of ripe tomatoes to donate to our local food pantry.

Last year’s garden was such a success that when it came time for another ACE leadership training session in October of 2011 and another shot at a grant to continue our garden, me and a fellow STAGE-er named Aarohi knew that we had to attend. Despite a somewhat stressful drive to the Museum of Science in the great city of Boston (I still insist that I was giving extremely clear directions and Aarohi was just a bad driver), we had a really great time learning about new projects, meeting other students in Massachusetts with the same goals as us, and playing some awesome games. We wrote our grant application in the hope that we would be able to spread the word about our school garden and expand upon it. When we learned a few weeks later that we were going to receive the grant, the only way to describe our reaction is to say that we were pumped!

Now we have come full circle and we’re starting the garden all over again. Not to toot my own horn, but my family were farmers who have passed down many a secret about tomatoes from generation to generation, and I love sharing these facts with my fellow STAGE members as we work on the garden. This year, we have a grand total of eighteen tomato plants of varying breeds and about a dozen cucumber plants. About a month ago we rounded up all of our members and planted the garden as a group, but those plants are already pretty big.

Now that school is done for the year a few members and I will be taking care of the garden over the summer. As the resident tomato expert, I’m responsible for tying the tomato plants up to stakes when they get too tall (which I plan on doing tomorrow), and pruning the plants, but everyone else in STAGE is more than happy to water the plants and pick the ripe vegetables to donate for us. After one successful year, I’m confident that this garden will succeed our expectations! Well, I would love to continue but it’s just about time to water the garden. I hope you all have a fruitful summer—I know that we will!