Every Sunday students in Frances Eddy's class show up at the Paget Community Garden to learn some important lessons about the soil and the food it produces.

The class is taught by Mrs. Eddy through Community Education and the students listen attentively to their teacher as she explains how to grow food using the Grow Bio-intensive method.

"The idea is they can grown a lot of food in a very small space," said Mrs Eddy, who watched as the students began planting in one of the four-feet-by 22-feet beds they have prepared.

In these times of mass production in the growth of fruits and vegetables, more and more people are taking a keen interest in what they are eating from the earth.

"The organic thing appeals to me because we are hearing so much about chemicals going into our food," said David Wellman, a member of the class.

"What's nice about this is we are learning to take care of the soil so that it become self sustaining. I really like that.

"Bermuda is small and if we can do stuff that makes our soil stronger - where we can keep gardening without depleting the soil - that to me is a good thing.

"The first two classes were theory, learning about the bio-intensive method and now we're into the practical phase. When I leave here I go straight up to my mother's garden and do hers.

"What I learn here I put to use right away, and I definitely learn by doing. I just want to see how it turns out."

Mr. Wellman can remember a Bermuda where many people grew vegetables in small back yard gardens. He, like others, is concerned about what is being used to help fruits and vegetables grow quicker.

"From my granny and her friends, there was always people around us gardening," he recalls.

"Just about everybody had a plot, some growing flowers, vegetables and had chickens. We were pretty self sufficient.

"My wife was in the store and the guy was saying that the bananas were spotting and they must have put too much gas on them. You don't know what you're eating anymore.

"If I was able to keep it up and grow a high percent of my own vegetables, I would be pretty happy.

"There is also a cost thing, it would save you a lot of money a year. It's also good therapy for me."

Mrs. Eddy calls the method of gardening she is teaching 'sustainable agriculture'.

"The purpose of it is to grow things in a way that you are not depleting the soil, that you are always putting nutrients back in the soil and building the soil. Compost is very important and we put six buckets of compost in each bed.

"The second thing is we are maximising space. The idea is you can grow a lot of food in a very small space, that's why you see us measuring. You don't need to waste space by allowing more space per plant than the plant actually needs.

"We space the vegetables close together so that when they mature they are barely touching. It shades the ground so that the moisture doesn't evaporate so easily.

"The idea is I'm trying to show people that they can feed their families from a small plot and also with less effort. You can get more food out of a 20x4 foot area by creating raised beds. Each of them is 'double dug' (an English method of preparing the soil) and based on the soil test you find out what amendments you need to add to the soil.

"There are certain plants that grown better if they grow in the vicinity of other plants, companions, and there are some plants that you shouldn't grown together because they just don't grow in the company of those plants. If you know that you plan your bed accordingly."

Mrs. Eddy created the Farmers' Market a year ago and has been teaching gardening for the past three years, with three classes a year. The current class, which started in January and will run until March, began with 16 participants and they are growing vegetables that are suitable for this time of year in Bermuda.

"I'm teaching the courses under the auspices of the Community Education Programme, but I also recruit through Farmers' Market where I am every Saturday," she explained.

"People come for different reasons. Because this is organic gardening, people are attracted to the class. People today are more concerned about their health and also about the environment, so they want to use methods that are earth friendly and friendly to their bodies."

Class participant Claire Hatcher enjoys the class and is learning a lot.

"I took it to repair the ignorance I had of things to do with the soil," she admits.

"It's a fantastic initiative and I wanted to support it. In the society we're in most people don't have much exposure to learning these sorts of things. My father always had basic foods for us - potatoes, broccoli and we didn't learn a lot about the technical side of it but we would help with the weeding.

"It's important to increase the amount of organic produce, because in the long run it will be of greater benefit to the earth, to have more people gardening with more awareness as to what they are putting into the soil and what techniques they are using."

Marlie Powell and her husband Harry are learning about gardening together and picking up some valuable tips.

"It's fantastic, we learned an awful lot more about what we need to do to get the soil right," said Marlie a school teacher who wants to teach her students what she is learning.

"We already composted and did gardening at home but it was hit or miss. We wanted to learn more about how to manage the garden and get more produce out of it.

"Also, I teach school and I'm hoping to learn more things I can do with the students.

"Where we're gardening at home was an ancient garden where grandpa had all the vegetables. We knew the soil was important, but we didn't know how important.

"Then both our daughters came home from university and said 'we're vegetarians', so we thought we'd better get cracking."

"It's a lot cheaper, you don't have to feed them," quipped her husband.

Mrs Powell admits they have gained more than they expected out of the classes.

"We thought we were going to learn to garden responsibly and have a little more control on it, but we've learned about the bio-intensive aspect of it, where we can garden on a small amount of land and grow a lot more," she explained.

"Another thing Frances has done is bring to us her knowledge, but also the Government statistics and charts and records and when to plant what where, how and how much and how deep and how far apart. We feel like we're a lot more knowledgeable and that we will have a lot more control over what we're doing. It won't be so hit or miss."

The Grow Bio-intensive method was developed more than 30 years ago by an organisation in California called Ecology Action. One of the key figures behind it is John Jeavons who wrote the best-selling book 'How to Grow More Vegetables' which Mrs. Eddy uses as a reference in her classes and urges her students to buy.