Michael Martel leaned over a swatch of brown dirt, pulling out weeds.

The 11-year-old laughed with his classmates as they discovered bands of tiny bugs and figured out which of the wispy, green clumps were plants and which were weeds that had to go.

"It's not hard for me," Michael said. "I got my mom's green finger."

He was working in one of about a dozen rectangular plots behind Sunset School in Oak View. An orchard separates the area from a playing field and includes a star-shaped garden planted to attract butterflies.

Much of the work in the garden is done by Sunset's K-5 students and staff. Materials and improvements, however, have been financed through a mishmash of sources. Gardens rarely are a priority in school district budgets and typically depend on support from parent-teacher groups.

So when state officials announced this year that they were doling out $15 million to invest in school gardens, districts throughout Ventura County signed up to get some of the cash. Applications are due today.

From Ojai to Thousand Oaks, districts have submitted requests for dozens of school gardens. California's Instructional School Garden Program was approved by state lawmakers last year to help pay for schools to create, maintain and expand instructional gardens.

"School gardens reinforce healthy food choices and lifestyles in an experimental learning environment," state schools superintendent Jack O'Connell has said. But fewer than a third of all California schools have instructional gardens.

Oxnard School District officials asked schools to decide whether such grants would be beneficial. Sixth-grade teacher Patricia Wooden took the lead at McAuliffe School, which hopes to get some grant money to improve its garden.

After she and a kindergarten teacher attended a gardening workshop last year, the two decided to resurrect an overgrown plot at the school. Several other teachers have since asked to use it.

Wooden sets aside time once a week for her students to work in the garden, which helps them learn science, math, reasoning and other skills.

"It's very hard to get hands-on experience in the classroom," Wooden said. But outside in the garden, opportunities abound.

Grants can reach $5,000

Public schools with fewer than 1,000 students can apply for $2,500 grants under the new state program. Larger schools can apply for as much as $5,000. The state expects to announce the recipients as early as next month.

"It's a really easy application," said Kathy Asher, the Ventura Unified School District's director of curriculum and instruction. She expected a dozen elementary schools, including Sunset, to apply for the cash.

The Conejo Valley Unified, Pleasant Valley, Moorpark Unified and Ojai Unified districts also have schools requesting the grants.

"It's rare," said Linda Peralta, Conejo Valley's director of elementary instruction. "This is a wonderful opportunity."

While funding can be sparse, several educators said it's also not always easy to find time for garden-based learning, particularly with the nationwide push for more reading and math instruction in recent years.

But, they said, a garden can be instrumental in teaching students the three R's, as well as other lessons.

"Everybody has something to do," said teacher Charline Norton at Sunset School. "No one is left out."

Students plan where and what to plant and discover osmosis and photosynthesis as they happen. They use the garden as an inspiration to write, paint and draw while they increase their vocabulary and learn about nutrition, irrigation and different types of soils.

Kids love to dig in dirt

Norton, who helped start the gardening program in Oak View 12 years ago, has recently retired from Ventura Unified but returns to Sunset one day a week and teaches in the garden.

"California is such a huge agricultural state," she said. "Some kids have never dug in the dirt before, and they love to do it."

At Sunset, the trees lining the edge of students' plots bear figs, apples, grapes, Asian pears, plums, apricots and oranges about 100 pounds of fruit, some of which is sold in a mini-farmers market held at the school. Proceeds support the garden, which also yields vegetables and herbs.

"It's fun," said Kyle Hoyt, 10, who was supervising the planting of tomato, bell pepper and zucchini seeds in a plot nearby. "You can watch things grow."