2. Spring fatigue
• With the beginning of spring a lot of us experience spring fatigue. Our students are no
exception. Spring fatigue is characterized by a state of low energy and exhaustion.
One of the reasons may be that the body's serotonin or „the happiness hormone“
reserves empty out in the winter because its production depends on daylight.
Another reason is vitamin deficiency since our vitamin D production also depends on
daylight and the vitamin level in fruit and vegetables available in winter are not equal
to those we consume in spring and summer.
• So, we need vitamins! A great source are fruit and vegetables. The problem is that
fruit and vegetables available in stores may not be a good source of vitamins. We
don't know how long they had been stored before they reached the stores. So, we
wanted to do something different with our students – grow our own vegetables the
healthy way!
• We believe that we can find „wonderplants“ in nature and use them in many different
ways – as food, tea, fertilizers etc.
• We asked our students if they knew anything about wild plants. Their knowledge was
scarce. They were asked to do a research - ask family members or look up on the
internet and in books. They came up with several plants and their different uses. The
next step was to determine these plants with the help of illustrations.
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3. Here is a list of books and magazines we studied.
List of references
• Toplak Galle, Katja: Hrvatsko ljekovito bilje, Zagreb, Mozaik knjiga, 2001.
• Martić, Ivan: Čovjek i ljekovito bilje, Zagreb, Školska knjiga, 2003.
• Su Bristow:Ljekovito bilje, priručnik: Zagreb, Veble commerce, 2005.
• Bruno P. Kremer: Ljekovito bilje, Zagreb, Begen d.o.o., 2007.
• Marčinković, Juro: Božja biljna ljekarna, zagreb, Školska knjiga, 2001.
• Theiss, Peter: Ljekovito bilje za zdravu obitelj, Zagreb, Naturprodukt, 2004.
• Stangl, Martin: Vrt moj hobi, Split, Marjan tisak , 2008.
• Kreuter, Marie-Luise: Bio vrt, Split, Marjan tisak, 2008.
• Dubravec, Katarina-Daniela, Dubravec, Ivo: Biljne vrste livada i pašnjaka,
Zagreb, Školska knjiga, 2001.
• Gospodarski list: Broj 10, lipanj 2005.( Paić, Milana: Biljne juhe za biovrtlare,
str. 45.-50.)
Broj 13/14, srpanj-kolovoz 2005. (M. Kranjčević: Stolisnik-
biljka velikih iscjeljiteljskih moći, str.19.)
Broj 8, svibanj 2008. (Kranjčević, Marija: Mirisni cvjetovi
bazge- za čaj i desert, str. 19), Zagreb, Gospodarski list
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4. These are the plants we chose for the spring part of the project.
We believe they are „wonderplants“ since they can be used in
many different ways.
daisy tratinčica Bellis parennis
dandelion maslačak Taraxacum officinale
yarrow stolisnik Achillea millefolium
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6. After a very long and cold winter, our students could hardly wait
to get on their bikes and head to the country.
They usually don't notice the abundance of plants surrounding them.
This time we wanted them to identify as many plants as possible
using illustrated books about healing plants.
As soon as they started looking for plants and reading about their
benefits, they were astonished to see that we live in
„God's pharmacy“.
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7. Yummy Friday
Some of the plants we identified are edible, so we found some
simple recipes and some students' mothers volunteered to
come to school and prepare tasty and healthy meals.
That was the beginning of „Yummy Friday“.
Nettle strudel
To prepare this yummy strudel we needed eggs, thin pastry,
cottage cheese, nettle leaves, salt and oil.
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11. Yarrow spread
Some of the recipes are so simple that it was
no problem for a couple of our students to prepare. For this they
needed only French bread, cream cheese spread or butter and
finely chopped yarrow leaves. Another success!
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13. Fried elder flowers
Elder flowers and pancake
batter made a very tasty
school snack.
Most student have never
eaten it before and enjoyed it
very much.
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14. Elder syrup
Elder tree was believed to keep the witches away, so, most people
have them in their gardens. A lot of people still make this
popular and refreshing syrup today.
It's much healthier to drink elder juice than commercially available
drinks full of artificial colourings and additives.
We used only elder flowers, lemons and some sugar.
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17. We decided to dry some
plants and make
refreshing, healthy tea.
nettle
yarrow
elder
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18. Project song
Members of the school choir and orchestra wrote their own lyrics to the tune of
Carl Orff's „Ding Dong“ and it became our official project song „Vitamins“
(Give, give, give
Give us vitamins
Nice and healthy vitamins)
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19. Garden
New organic vegetable garden
For years we have had a beautiful flower garden and with the
trend of growing one's own vegetables, we decided to start a
vegetable garden.
In order to be eco-friendly our garden will be purely organic.
A part of our gym hallway is used as a greenhouse where our
students can grow seedlings.
Plans will be treated with organic fertilizers and sprays.
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20. Organic fertilizers
Students collected plants, from which we prepared two different
fertilizers.
For one we used nettle leaves and the other was a mixture of three
different plants – comfrey, field horsetail and shepherd’s purse.
comfrey gavez Symphytum officinale
nettle kopriva Urtica dioica
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21. Plants were chopped and placed in plastic containers, which
were then filled with water and left to
brew for at least ten days and occasionally needed to be stirred.
field horsetail preslica Equisetum arvense
shepherd’s purse rusomača Capsella bursa-pasoris
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23. Spraying
Nettle spray can be used as an aphicide
in our rose garden.
Fertiliser
We use our liquid fertilisers in our flower
and vegetable gardens to make our
plants grow better and improve the soil
quality.
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