The 1st-graders’ trip to Battery Urban Farm in lower Manhattan was a feast for the senses.

Teacher Sara Lisa Enea’s class from PS 234 in Tribeca planted beds of tatsoi Asian cabbage and peas. They rubbed lavender plants and basil leaves and savored the smell left on their fingers. They watched bee pollinators in action on zinnia flowers. And they picked and sampled two fruits they had never heard of before: cucamelons, which look like tiny watermelons but taste like cucumbers, and ground cherries, also known as cape gooseberries.

The students, Enea and other chaperones had traveled a few stops on the subway and walked past high-rise buildings to get to the one-acre urban oasis. The Battery Conservancy created Battery Urban Farm in 2011 to teach students, residents and visitors about sustainable farming and healthy eating.

“So, look up. Do you see we’re still in New York City? But there still can be a farm,” farm educator Sadie Saltzman told the children, who are in Battery Urban Farm’s Student Farmers program, as a nearby truck sounded its horn.

The Sept. 28 class trip was the first of several visits to the Battery Urban Farm and other urban farms that Enea’s class will make this school year as the 1st-graders progress through an urban farming unit and learn about hydroponic, vertical, greenhouse and rooftop farming.

At the end of the unit, the students will take on the job of city planner. “They will take all the learning from the field trips and in the classroom, and they get to plan and create their own urban farm,” Enea said.

The PS 234 students learned that ground cherries are ripe when they are yellow and orange, and Sungold tomatoes are ready to eat when they are “the color of a traffic cone.” They also sampled some herbs, such as lemon balm, fennel seeds and mint. “It tastes like my sister’s toothpaste,” one 1st-grader said when she tasted the mint leaf.

In addition to the garden, which produces thousands of pounds of vegetables, fruits, herbs, grains and flowers each year, the Battery Urban Farm includes a forest farm with more than 50 edible and medicinal native plants. The farm offers a variety of learning experiences from April through October, including “Urban Farm Adventure” for elementary schools and “Introduction to Urban Agriculture,” “Decomposition and Soil Science” and “Food Systems and Climate Change” for middle and high schools.

Also that day, 1st-graders from PS 397, near City Hall in Manhattan, visited on their first field trip of the school year. The experience complements the “Healthy Me!” unit, said 1st-grade teacher Emma Fraser, the school’s chapter leader.

The class, also part of the Student Farmers program, is scheduled to return a few times during the year to monitor seasonal changes, which makes the farm special as a field trip destination, Fraser said. On one spring trip, students will make and eat a salad. On another, PS 397 teachers will use the farm’s lesson plan, worksheets and map to lead the tours.

“Since our study is how we stay healthy, how we can make these choices to help ourselves and our communities be healthy, the farm lends itself perfectly since it is so interactive and they’re not just watching,” Fraser said.

When the PS 397 students planted tatsoi, they placed the seeds in each hole of a long, green plastic planting aid to ensure proper spacing. A student’s father asked if it was late in the season to plant, but farm educator Mary McMahon assured him there was still time for hardy crops.

“We have no greenhouse here so we have to grow just when it’s able to grow outside,” she said.

McMahon thanked the children for their work. “You all helped us with our last round of planting,” she said, “which is pretty special.”

The Battery Urban Farm offers free guided and self-guided field trips for students in kindergarten through grade 12. Guided tours, which are 75 minutes long, are offered from April through October. Self-guided tours are available year-round. The farm provides lesson plans and other materials that are tailored to the different themes. Online registration for field trips takes place four times a year at www.thebattery.org/programs/education.For more information, email education [at] thebattery [dot] org (education[at]thebattery[dot]org).