Planting Our Garden!

What at  first looked to be a rainy day turned around and was bright, beautiful and sunny. Our first day back in the garden was a huge success! We had a great turnout of children and their families both old and new to our program. We started with a general introduction to the Kids Grow program, an overview of community gardening in Calgary and gave participants a sneak peak of our event plans for the summer of 2014. This was followed by our theme of the day: Planting our garden. The children worked together to choose what kinds of vegetables, greens and flowers they wanted to grow and then we decorated popsicle stick garden stakes to label our plot. After all the hard work planting, we wouldn't want to forget what we have grown! We talked about how to plant seeds, the germination process and figured out what plants require to grow and thrive. Each location enjoyed a delicious snack of bush green beans and grape tomatoes generously donated to us by Sunnyside Natural Market.The kids raved over the snack and there wasn't a single bean or tomato left by the end of the day!

We began at Sunnyside with some hard work weeding and preparing the soil for planting. Each child took a rake or a shovel and began breaking down the tough soil before we mixed in a bag of compost to revitalize the nutrients. Under all the weeds, we found our hardy mint plant from last year, boasting with large and fragrant mint leaves. Working as a team, the children and their families planted our beloved garden plot with many different types of vegetables and greens; Swiss Chard, Peas, Beans, Radish, Carrots, Kale, Chives, Spinach, Squash and Mesculin. Our plot might look empty now but we sure are hoping for a bountiful harvest at the end of the season! 

Over at Silver Springs, the lovely community garden members had started some potatoes and pumpkins for us! The potatoes are growing really well already! We planted our other bed with beans, kale, peas, two different types of squash, and cucumber.

To end the day at both Sunnyside and Silver Springs, we got some fresh air, exercise and our intake of Vitamin D for the day by playing games of Caterpillar tag, Cucumber tag and Magic Garden. To recap our favourite parts of the day we finished with a sharing circle where all participants got to share their experiences with planting our garden.

                             
If you missed out on the fun last week be sure to join us this Saturday, June 28th to learn about garden pests and garden helpers, have a delicious healthy snack, story time and play some fun games!

Where?

Hillhurst Sunnyside Community Garden/ Orchard
10am-12pm

OR

Silver Springs Edible Garden
2pm-4pm

What to bring? Water, sunscreen and your enthusiasm for gardening!

*Kids Grow Cancellation Policy* If it lighting raining or drizzling outside, Kids Grow events will still run! However, in case of heavy rainfall, thundershowers, hail and other extremely unpleasant weather conditions, we will cancel the day's events. Make sure you check our Facebook/Twitter feed before you leave in case you are unsure