A Harvest to Remember

With the cold frosts and wintry chills that have recently greeted Calgary, the gardening season has officially come to an end. A few last minute goods were collected to celebrate the final harvest of our Kids Grow! garden. These lovingly grown garden goodies were perfect for a delectable harvest salad.

 Harvest Salad Recipe

 Lettuce

Green Beans

Squash

Corn

White Radish

Sweet Peas

Thoroughly wash all vegetables to make sure there are no bugs in your salad! Cook up the corn and squash, chop your veggies and toss them into a bowl. We mixed up a nice honey and red wine vinaigrette to liven up the salad and finished it off with grated radish as a garnish. The salad was full of earthy colours and a variety of flavors; the sweet corn and peas, the hearty lettuce and the pungent kick of the radish. All ingredients came from our Kids Grow! plot; all locally grown, fresh and free of any harsh chemicals.

Our garden brought us a lot of joy this year but the Kids Grow! program would not have been such an amazing experience without the opportunity or the great amount of community support we received. First of all, we must thank the Centre for Community Engaged Learning at the University of Calgary for continuing to successfully foster the connection between the academic and community and for giving us the opportunity to be part of such a life-changing project. A huge thank you goes to the Hillhurst/Sunnyside Community for being incredibly open and supportive of our initiative. We also need to thank our guest speakers and workshop experts who generously donated their time to make our events enlightening learning experiences for the children and parents. And lastly, thank you to everyone who attended our events and anyone who supported us along the way. It has been a fantastic summer, a harvest to remember with no doubt.

Even though the gardening programming for the summer has come to an end, Kids Grow! would like to share some exciting news with you. We have been invited to speak at Food Secure Canada's national assembly this November. At this exciting national conference entitled Powering Up! Food for the Future, we will share our story and hopefully spark interest in others to realize the potential children's gardens can have in our society.

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