The Good, the Bad and the Bugly- All about pests!

Today at Kids Grow! we learned all about garden pests and helpers. We started out the day at Hillhurst Sunnyside, weeding our garden and taking a look at some of its residents, including a daddy long legs, some ants, and lots of bumble bees! After working on the garden, we headed over to the orchard to get started on some crafts and activities. First, we talked about garden pests and helpers, sorting insects and animals into 'Garden Helpers' and 'Garden Pests'. It's important to talk about how we treat all organisms in the garden; both helpful ones and hurtful ones. Spraying gardens with harsh chemicals and pesticides can have unintended effects, so we talked about other methods of dealing with pests. A great way to keep pesky birds from eating gardens is to set up a pinwheel to scare them away, so for today's craft, we made our own home made pinwheels!

Decorating our pinwheels!

Everyone started decorating their pinwheels with colourful drawings before assembling them. The results were beautiful, and everyone had a great time making them!


After finishing our pinwheels, we played a game of 'Farmers and Pests' in the orchard. Stealing all the farmer's food worked up an appetite for the animals, so we took a break for a healthy and delicious snack of grape tomatoes and cucumber slices. After another game of 'Farmers and Pests', it was time to say goodbye in Sunnyside Hillhurst until next Saturday's wrap-up. What a great morning!

In Silver Springs, the garden is looking amazing! There were lots of beans, carrots, beets, squash, pumpkins, and zucchini all ready to be harvested! After going through the day's crafts and activities, we went on a search in the garden for 'helpers' and 'pests', and we found some bumble bees, which help with pollination, and wasps, which (despite their bad reputation) help to clean up decomposing materials. After checking out some more great facts about bugs, we got to harvest a pumpkin, lots of carrots, and some beets! With so much produce left at the garden, we hope to see lots of people at next week's wrap-up so everyone can take something yummy home!

We'll see you next week!

Updates on KidsGrow! activity

After taking into careful consideration the current situation in Hillhurst Sunnyside, the KidsGrow! team has come to decision to postpone activity in the Hillhurst Sunnyside Community Garden until further notice. Once we can guarantee that the area is safe for kids to be playing and working in, we will begin to resume work in the garden, and we will announce the next KidsGrow! date for Hillhurst Sunnyside. 

In the meantime, everyone is invited to the Silver Springs location, where some tasty looking veggies are starting to sprout up.  Join us this Saturday at our Silver Springs location for some fun activities and a supportive atmosphere. We hope to see you there!

Our Silver Springs location looks great,
and would love some more helpers for weeding!

We hope everyone is doing well and staying safe. Please know that the KidsGrow! community is here to support the community in whatever ways we can, and we hope to resume work in Hillhurst Sunnyside as soon as we can. 

Help support the Hillhurst Sunnyside Community

Over the past few days, areas of Southern Alberta including the city of Calgary have experienced unprecedented damage due to extensive flooding. Hundreds of thousands of people have been affected, and many communities have been affected. Among these communities include Hillhurst Sunnyside, the location of one of the gardens that KidsGrow! operates out of. 

The KidsGrow! team is heartbroken over the damage to the community, and we want to help in any way that we can. If you are interested in helping the Hillhurst Sunnyside community, the Hilhurst Sunnyside Community Association Facebook page will be acting as a source of updates and an area to coordinate volunteers. If you do not have Facebook, please contact Quentin Sinclair (the Hillhurst Sunnyside Community Association's Executive Director) at volunteer@hillhurstsunnyside.org to learn more about how you can help the Hillhurst Sunnyside community. 

In times like these, we are all reminded of what truly brings Calgarians together; our incredible sense of community. Over the next several days, weeks, and months, our sense of community can only grow as we work together to rebuild our city and our province. Please stand with the Hillhurst Sunnyside Community as we all work together to grow stronger. 

A day of friendship and family

Our day started off sunny and clear, with lots of sun (and lots of mosquitoes!) to greet us at the Hillhurst Sunnyside Community Garden. Everyone met up in the orchard and we started out with some great sidewalk chalk drawings to help advertise KidsGrow and get everyone thinking about gardening and plants.

After finishing up our sidewalk masterpieces, we played a few games of 'Magic Garden' and 'Aphid Tag' to get everyone excited and burn off some energy.

We were very tired out after all that running around, so we then headed over to the picnic table to start in on the day's activity! A big part of gardening is celebrating the beauty of nature and the outdoors with the people you love, so our theme of the day was focusing on friendship and family. The kids got to get creative decorating a gift for a friend or family member: pots with a strawberry plant inside! Our young artists did a spectacular job making their plain pots dazzling with stickers and drawings. After finishing up, everyone headed over to the garden to fill their beautiful pots with the strawberry plants!

"Needs more stickers!"

Reading 'Compost Stew'

Once the plants were safely tucked away, we got to weeding and watering our garden to help it grow strong and healthy. We made some new friends as we got to see a beetle and LOTS of wriggly worms! Once our work in the garden was finished, everyone headed back to the orchard for a healthy snack of red grapes, and a game of 'Chipmunk cheeks' to see who could fit the most grapes in their mouth! We wrapped up the morning with story time, and we got to enjoy 'Compost Stew' by Mary McKenna Siddals and 'Growing Vegetable Soup' by Lois Ehlert. It was a gorgeous morning to celebrate the people we love!

After some frightful weather in the afternoon, we had a somewhat damp start at the Silver Springs Edible Garden. Luckily, the sky cleared up, and the ominous clouds were replaced by clear blue skies. We started off our activities making 'coupons' for someone special. The idea is that you write out an outdoor activity you wish to do with someone special and the person you want to spend some time with, and presto! you have a wonderful gift. We moved on to checking out how our garden is growing. We spotted some radishes and onions starting to sprout, as well as our herbs and seedlings starting to grow. The kids were especially interested in trying some of the herbs that we had planted, and we soon discovered that mint and parsley were the fan favourites. We can't wait to see what sprouts up next week! After taking inventory of the garden, we decorated our pots and transplanted some sunflowers and bean seeds into the pots. While waiting for the decorations to dry on the pots, we played a few games of 'Magic Garden' and played on the nearby playground, ending the day's activities with a sharing circle. 

We had a wonderful time today, and we were so glad to spend some time with our friends. We wish everyone a great weekend and a happy Father's day! Families of all different shapes and sizes are beautiful things, and we hope you take some time out to remember the importance of family and friendship. Maybe you can spend some time outside with the people you love, going on a walk, or tending to a garden!

To see more pictures from Saturday's event, check out our Facebook page

See you next week!

Let's get digging: Our first day of KidsGrow!

We had a great start to this year's KidsGrow program! Here are some pictures from our Hillhurst Sunnyside location. Many thanks to Christy for taking these gorgeous photos, it is much appreciated. Next week, we hope to have more pictures from both our locations!

See you this Saturday!

What shall we grow today...?

Today was the first day of the 2013 KidsGrow season, and what an exciting day it was!

The day started off warm and beautiful, the perfect weather for planting a new garden. We first visited the Hillhurst Sunnyside community garden, and we worked hard to prepare soil for our new plants. That meant weeding and aerating the soil so our plants' roots would have room to grow. We then got to flex our artistic muscles as we moved on to planning the garden. Everyone had a great time drawing out what our garden will look like, and what plants and animals we expect to find in there! After some snap peas and carrots to fuel all our young gardeners' hard work, we headed back to the garden to start planting. Sunflowers, beans, zucchini, radishes, peas, and beets were among the kids' favourite things to plant, and should look amazing once they start growing! A good watering and a sprinkle of compost finished our work off, and everyone started to say their goodbyes. A big thanks to all the little gardeners and parents who came out! Without you, the day would not have been possible!


During the afternoon, we had our first ever KidsGrow program at the Edible Garden in Silver Springs! After a bit of a slow start, we had lots of new friends come and help us plan and plant our garden. We learned some great lessons from the kids on how to dig a proper hole, and how to 'tickle' the roots of a plant you are moving into the garden to help gently separate the roots. An important part of the day was learning about respect for others, and that making rules for our garden helps keep everyone safe and having fun. After munching on some healthy snacks, we ended the day with a few games of 'Magic Garden', and a sharing circle to talk about what we learned.

Many thanks to everyone who came out, and to the members of the community who helped us get started and feel welcome. We could not have done it without you!

Stay tuned for next week, where we'll talk about what we have learned during our second day of KidsGrow!

August 18: Scrapbook day

Making Memories !

Today, we spent a while weeding the garden as the radish plants were twisted all together. We also found many slugs which we took out and moved out of the garden. The kids loved getting their hands dirty and pulling all the slimy slugs out!

Then, we handed out sheets of coloured paper and had the kids decorate it as they wished. We also stuck a small bubble to each page that asked a question like, "What is your favourite vegetable?". The kids loved decorating the papers with stickers, paint, glitter, and feathers so much so that many of them wanted to do another one. We will be putting each of these papers into a scrapbook for Kids Grow! to remember this summer in the garden.

We ended the sunny morning off with a few games of farmer and the animals. Thanks for coming out everyone and make sure to join us for the harvest picnic in September!

Scavenger Hunt Extravaganza!

We're into August and our garden is a jungle! The daikon is towering like skyscrapers, and the beans are spiralling into the clouds. The vision of our garden inspires the kids and they sit down to illustrate what they see. How different it looks from the beginning of June, when all that could be seen was the brown soil of the plot. Now green overwhelms the scene, while yellow squash flowers explode joyful blooms. The red and orange vibrance of the nasturtiums contrast wildly with the soft green blades of corn leaves. Everywhere is spotted with colour and joy. We feel calm and awe in the miracle of our garden.

The radishes are in abundance so we try to pull some of them up. Their roots smell sharp and pungent. Some of us crunch on the crisp snap peas, or steal some sweet raspberries from our neighbours stand.
Today we are going to have a really fun scavenger hunt. Each of us receives a card and marker to check off what we find. All sorts of nature things are on our list. We must find a bird, a butterfly, and two ripe strawberries, an orange flower, and a lonely pear tree. We also have to look for a Ken doll doing the splits, a pink pig with blue earrings, and a bunck of puzzle pieces.

The kids scatter with excitement and search all over the orchard to find the hidden things. Some kids work togther, and others go it alone. Sometimes they ask each other for help, utilizing the power of the collective and mutual assistance. Eventually everything is found on our search cards and now we are immersed in solving the puzzle. Both kids and adults work together, sharing in the enjoyment of accomplishing our goal.

A fresh, juicy watermelon is on the menu for snack time. The kids gobble their pieces up and start into making recipe cards for our scrap book. This is a crazy project in which the kids can learn about the types of things needed for a recipe: Ingredient lists, and directions as well as all different types of foods. We need to put measurments in our recipes as well, and of course a great title. The kids create all kinds of recipes some very practical, and others wild and silly.

Our little garden community is getting stronger and stronger. We love spending Saturday mornings together!

Wild Medicine

It is a warm and lovely morning as the kids begin to trickle their way to the garden. Hidden amongst the broad green leaves that continue to sprawl from our garden plot, lay the tasty fruit of our labour. We are so excited to see our garden bloom!

We are lucky today, as we have a very special guest. Kalyn Byrne, a Clinical Herbalist, is here to talk to us about responsible wildcrafting and where to find the abundant medicines in our community. Wildcrafting is a term people use when they talk about collecting wild plants. We learn that it is really important not to take too much of the generous plants around us and to be sure to leave a lot for both the animals that rely on them, and the future generations that may need them for their use. Ethical wildcrafting is based on the belief that we as humans are stewards of the earth, and we must protect and encourage the growth of wild medicines rather than exploit and monopolize them for our own selfish desires.

Kalyn has brought some special frames with her for us to create our own plant part collage. After receiving the rules about ethical wildcrafting, we set out to find pieces of plants to decorate our picture. Not only will these plant pieces contribute to a beautiful work of art, but they will help remind us of the plants we sourced, and their magical benefits.

The kids immediately dart off to find interesting shapes of leaves and colourful flower petals, while some of the parents pick Kalyn's brain about the properties and uses of some of the wild herbs we are discovering in and around the orchard. We learn that strawberry leaves contain high amounts of vitamin C, and that every part of the dandelion plant can be used as an effective medicine for our well being.

In a small area by the side of the gravelly road we find a variety of plants, all of which can be used as medicine. What many people see as weeds are, in actual fact, very powerful medicines over which we tread every day.

Finally, we finish collecting our plant pieces and begin to construct our collages. The kids focus on making excellent works of art that they can hang in their rooms and remember the plants they used.

Once we thank Kalyn for her generosity of knowledge, we decide it's a good time to enjoy a snack of sliced cucumbers and grape tomatoes. Then we have a fallen apple collection race, and everyone returns with a ton of apples. Everyone is a winner when we tell them what we will be doing with the bounty of fruit. Apple butter will be on the menu at our harvest picnic!

One more surprise is on the itinerary today, as it is International Day of Dancing! Everone gets on the dance-orchard floor and busts a move in a game of freeze dance. What a way to start the week-end!

Tree Pose

What does yoga have to do with gardening? Well, it actually has a lot to do with gardening. We garden because we want to grow nutritious food for our minds and bodies. We also garden to take part in a community of people who value taking care of the earth and each other. Yoga helps us attain both of these things as well.

Yoga asana is the practice of different postures that can help balance the body and mind. Asana can help improve our strength, flexibility, and stamina. Anyone can practice yoga and our group of Kids Grow! participants proved just that.

Abbie Gardiner, a wonderful yoga instructor from The Yoga Shala guided us through a fun practice which incorporated breathing and postures that resembled various things we would find in nature. Each of us received a flower to remind us to breathe deeply, as if inhaling an aromatic bouquet, while practicing yoga. We became lions and butterflies, dragonflies and bees, and by the end of the practice we lay still under the warm sun and allowed our bodies to completely relax.

The focused attention required to practice yoga helps to cultivate a deep sense of awareness. This awareness can help us make better choices in life. It is often when we are not aware that we make bad choices about the things we say or do. When we don't pay attention, it becomes easy to treat our minds and bodies poorly. We may choose to eat something that might taste good at the moment, but will hurt our bodies and communities in the long run.

Practicing yoga can be an excellent tool young people cab use to develope focus and confidence. The constant bombardment of media, advertising, and technological stimulation can have detrimetal affects on young minds. Yoga is an effective way for kids to unplug, and restore.

Yoga can also be a great activity to share with family and friends, strengthen bonds, and build conscious communities.  

Community Ecology

Every creature, no matter how small, plays a role in our community. Whether it be the ladybug who feeds on aphids, or the honeybee who pollinates the plants, every part of our environment plays a crucial part in sustaining balance and diversity.

Kids Grow! participants enjoyed learning about the unique community ecology of our garden through a fun storytelling activity. Everyone received a card with a particular plant, animal, or element that would inspire their part of an oral round-robin. The activity encouraged radical creativity, but also revealed useful information about each card. We learned that through their tuberous roots, dandelions draw essential minerals to nutrient poor surface soils. We also discovered that spiders, although kind of scary, help control fly populations (and sometimes save the planet from giant worms!)

Strategizing in the safe zone.

After a brief juicy- apple snack break we got our bodies moving with a heart-pumping game of Capture the Crops! We divided the field in half and one side was occupied by the farmer and his crops. The other side was occupied by various creatures whose objective was to capture the crops and return them to the safe zone. The creatures, a motley crew of squirrels, slugs, and ants, were very successful in their endeavours and even managed, at one point, to capture the farmer and hold her hostage! This demonstrates the power of numbers, and the success that can be achieved when harnessing the talents of each memebr of a community.

Weeding the orchard: A community effort!

The Do's and Don'ts of Compost

Did you know that you can compost lint but you can't compost brains? We learned a lot about the do's and don'ts of compost last Saturday, and we even got a chance to mix up our own compost too!

Compost is the remains of decomposed organic matter that can be used in gardens to enrich the soil. It is full of nutrients and good bugs that help make plants grow healthier and stronger. We can make good compost out of a number of things including fruit and vegetable scraps, cow manure, dead leaves and twigs, and even egg shells. Composting is a way to help the earth by honouring and contributing to essential life cycles that feed and nurture all living things on the planet. By feeding the earth we are also feeding ourselves, and other beings that depend on good soil for sustenance.

Anisha helped us learn more about composting by setting up a chart and going through a list of obvious and not so obvious compostable items.The kids learned a lot and laughed a lot, especially when Anisha asked us if we could compost a telephone.

Next, we got to mix up our own compost soup with some fruit and vegetable scraps, paper, lint, and egg carton bits. It was slimy and yucky, but the kids loved it! After mixing our own individual bowls of compost, we brought them to the main compost bin in the garden ( a feature every garden would greatly benefit from having), and dumped the contents in.

The Hillhurst Sunnyside Community Garden has a three stage system compost where there are three compost bins side by side. After filling up the first bin, you move the contents to the second bin and start to fill up the first bin again. When the first bin is full, you move the contents of the second bin to the third bin, and the contents of the first to the second bin. And finally, when you fill up the first bin again, you move all the contents over one bin, and the last bin is rich with dark compost material that can be added to the garden soil. This process involves the turning and mixing of compost to provide aeration required for decomposing bacteria. All the kids had a chance to turn the compost and experience the stench that is decomposing organic matter. Despite the grossness we had a marvelous time!

Wisdom of the Orchard

Jim Hollicky holding up some of the fruit of his labour in Sunnyside Orchard

Jim Hollicky, dedicated steward of the Sunnyside Orchard, knows just how important producing your own food is. Growing up in a small town in Saskatchewan during the "dirty thirties," Jim experienced what it was like to live off the land and do without the convenience of grocery stores. We were so lucky to have him share these memories with us in the warmth of the sun-blissed orchard.

As we strolled together through the Orchard it was evident that these trees and plants weren't just items in a shopping cart, but to Jim, they were living beings with histories of their own. We learned about how the variable Calgary winters had affected the growth of the Valentine Cherries, and how important it is to thin out the immature apple fruit so they have room to develop into big tasty fruit. We also heard the lovelorn story of the pear tree couple and how, through an act of vandalism, one  tree was destroyed, leaving the partner to live a fruitless life. We also witnessed a miracle of nature when seeing for our very own eyes a baby fruit on the single pear tree in the orchard.  Jim suspects the pear received the pollen from another tree, a new love from the yard of a neighbour in the community.

The children were excited to discover the massive strawberry patch amongst the flowers in the orchard garden, and even more excited to hear that they were welcome to eat the delicious berries whenever they pleased.

After our orchard tour, we settled in to make pinwheels for our gardens. Pinwheels are great deterrents of birds and other animals intent on pecking away at the food growing in the garden. We coloured the square paper on both sides and cut toward the centre from each corner. Then we glued the holes in each corner into the centre hole. We placed colourful beads on the stick and put the hole in our pinwheels through the stick. We finished off with a few more beads, and Voila!

If you ever stop by the orchard, be sure to try an apple or strawberry, but also make sure to spend a little time doing some weeding or picking dandelions before they go to seed. The Sunnyside Orchard is a product of the community and it takes more than one person or plant to make it beautiful!

The Wonder of Worms

It was a wriggly, wet adventure this morning as we learned about the importance of worms in the garden.

There was a mild drizzle of rain which made for excellent worm detecting conditions. We discovered that worms can be found in the dirt, and many like to hide beneath large stones surrounding the flower beds in the orchard. The children had no qualms about getting their hands dirty, as they dug into the mud to find the squiggly bugs.

We learned that worms have no eyes to see and when it's raining they often squirm to the surface and lose themselves on sidewalks where they might get stepped on. The children vowed to rescue worms whenever they were in distress, returning them to their home, the dirty mud, and saving them from the threat of heavy footsteps.


Worms transform rotting food into mineral rich castings that can help feed the plants in the garden. They are one of the many good bugs found in our environment who make up an integral part of the amazing circle of life.

To learn what it's like to be a worm we played a game called "The Worm and the Apple". We selected one person to be the worm and covered their eyes with a blind fold. The rest of us formed a circle around the "worm" and hid an apple for her to find. Sometimes the person closest to the apple would make a sound to help the worm find her way. The kids really enjoyed this game, and it allowed them to understand the importance being helpful to those in need, just like how the worms are helpful to the plants in the garden.

The kids also got their hearts pumping with a game of Squirmy Wormy Jump Rope where they had to leap over a skipping rope being agitated by two people on either end.

 Afterwards we listened to a story about Strega Nona's harvest while having some tasty mandarins.

Join us next week when we decorate our garden!