Making Pesto with Sharon

On Saturday July 18 the crew at Kids Grow! were fortunate to have Sharon from Poppy Innovations teach us how to make pesto using the ingredients the kids grew in our garden. Sharon talked about the importance of nutrition and how important it is for people to eat healthy food.

While Sharon was setting up, we played a game of Fruit Salad in the picnic area. Everyone had fun running around and thinking of our favourite fruits! Strawberries, raspberries, saskatoons, bananas (& banana bread!), apples, grapes, and more! There were so many fruits to choose.

Then, the moment we have all been waiting for finally arrived: we got to pick the spinach! Using the freshly picked spinach, Sharon taught us how to make some delicious pesto. Sharon delegated various tasks to the kids so that everyone had a part in making the pesto.

We had some people using a mortar and pestle to crush the spinach and greens, others were grating cheese, cutting pita, squeezing lemons, and some were even shaving the garlic with a micro-plane. Everyone worked together to make the pesto, and when we were done mixing the ingredients we were able to eat it. Yum!

With bellies full of our fabulous pesto, we said our goodbyes.
What a fantastic day!

Do you hear what I hear?

Birds seem to be abundant in the city of Calgary but we tend to overlook and become oblivious towards the common group of pigeons that hover over a green field in the summer or the crow that caws at you on your daily commute to work. What role do these birds play in our community, the greater ecosystem and more specifically our garden?

These are a few of the questions we began to explore at our Kids Grow event on Saturday, July 11th. We began by familiarizing ourselves with the common birds of Calgary. Many people are familiar with the Mallards and Geese that inhabit the surrounding bodies of water and the crows and pigeons that socialize in public areas but how much do we know about the starlings and sparrows? After our information session conducted through a fun game of matching bird pictures with their corresponding facts and bird calls, we took a nature walk to see what birds we could find. Our hearing skills were surely heightened on this adventure as we had to find the proprietors of each distinct sound amongst the harmonious bird chatter.

After our nature walk, we headed back to the garden to make some bird feeders. Many varieties of bird seed that can be bought at your local grocery stores contain preservatives and other not-so-nice things that can harm our wildlife. We decided to make our own using goodies that are safe for birds and completely edible for humans. Another problem highlighted with bird feeders is the sheer dependence birds can develop to an man-made source of food. The bigger your bird feeder and the more you refill it, the greater the chances are that birds in your area will keep coming back for more and develop a reliance on your goods. Ensure that your feeder is small and contains a variety of seeds and dried fruits that can be supplementary to their diet and not fully meet their dietary requirements. We made bird feeders out of orange peels! Click here for the instructions.

Succeeding our bird feeder construction were some fun bird-themed games! We began with the 'Duck Waddle' and finished with 'The Little Lost Birdie' in which parents and children paired up, one as the mama bird and one as the blindfolded baby bird. The mama bird would announce her specific bird call to the baby and the little birdie would have to use her listening skills to find her mama bird!

To learn more about birds in Calgary, check out the Inglewood Bird Sanctuary. The walking trails are unfortunately closed due to the flood damage from last year but they continue to offer information through their nature and free tours to those interested.

Library in the Garden!

Last Saturday we had Larissa from the Calgary Public Library join us for story time. She brought books that could be signed out by the kids, and shared information about the public library's 2015 Summer Reading Challenge. This is a great opportunity to enjoy reading while you discover amazing new books and you can even win prizes! She did a great job engaging kids in reading and inspired many of them to practice often so one day they too can read tons of books on their own. It was so fun to have you Larissa! Thank you!

Our other activities were more hands-on. The kids got their hands dirty with weeding and watering the garden. They are doing an amazing job at identifying weeds and plants and understanding what is helpful and harmful to our garden. Even adults were interested to learn that some plants which look beautiful with flowers are actually weeds and could be harmful to our vegetables or herbs that we want to grow. It takes a lot of water to harvest a healthy crop and we don't need anything else sucking it all up!

Our time was now coming to an end but we always are ready for some fun games! This weekend we played Four Corners which is always a lot of fun and you can try at home too! You can use a marker item to name a corner or just remember what you call each of the four corners. Say we have ours named Lettuce corner, Caterpillar corner, Water Can corner, and Sunshine corner then the person in the middle closes their eyes and counts to ten while everyone very quietly races to a corner. Without peaking the person in the centre calls out "Caterpillar corner!" and everyone in that corner has to come join them in the middle. The kids had a lot of fun and plenty to talk about in sharing circle when we shared our favourite moments!

A big thank you to everyone!

Worms Love Leftovers!

This past Saturday morning welcomed in some beautiful summer weather. We started the day off with some weeding and watering of the Kids Grow plot as well as neighbouring plots with "Please Water Me" signs. After a week of almost non-stop sunshine and scorching weather, the plants definitely needed a long drink! 

After finishing up with our gardening maintenance, the kids and their parents were thrilled to welcome Amy Sparks of Green Calgary, as she came to teach us all about worms in the garden, and what they like and don't like to eat! We were very interested to learn about worm anatomy (do you know which end of the worm their head is?!) with the help of her big (fake) worm friend, Squirmy Wormy! She also taught us how to tell apart baby, teenager and adult worms from each other. 

We then sorted food and other items into "yummy", "yucky" or "maybe" piles trying to decide what we thought the worms would like to eat. Amy helped all the kids through this activity and explained that worms like a lot of the same things we like to eat, except for any meat, citrus-y or acidic foods, dairy and milk, salty foods, and garbage. Interesting!

After that, Amy brought out her (real, live!) worm friends for everyone to observe under magnifying glasses or hold (gently!). It was really incredible to see the kids were at first quite nervous and hesitant to actually touch and hold the worms but became quite comfortable and confident handling them. Most of the parents were too "grossed out" to hold them, but the kids held nothing back. They were able to pick out body parts of the worms that they had just learned about, and to see if a worm was a baby, teenager or adult (and even to see if they were pregnant based on how swollen their "clitellum" was!). The kids also loved seeing how worms would clump up into a big wriggly ball together as a "squirm of worms". 

With Amy's time at the Kids Grow! garden up, everyone was eager for story time in the orchard. After story time, we enjoyed a snack of mandarin oranges (which the kids were quick to point out that, being a citrus fruit, the worms wouldn't like the peels!) and green grapes. Although it was scorching outside and very sunny, everyone was itching to play a game. First up was 'The Longest Worm', where we hid sparkly worm "pieces" (bits of pipecleaner or ribbon) all around the orchard. The kids were split into two teams: Team Worm and Team Squirmy Wormy. The teams had to try to find pieces of the worm and string them together to make "the longest worm". Amazingly, both team's worms ended up being the EXACT same length!! A tie!

After that, some of the older kids wanted to play "Farmer", where there are 2-3 "farmers" on one side of a rope/line with their "crops" (seed packages or plastic fruit) spread out on their "plot" that they have to protect. All of the other kids are "garden pests/animals" who stand on the other side of the rope. They have to capture as much of the farmer's crop as they can without being tagged. If they are tagged in the farmers plot, they have to freeze wait for an animal friend to unfreeze them by running under their arm. The kids played several rounds of this and finally it was time for sharing circle, where we all reflected on what learned and loved from the days activities and what Amy Spark had taught us about worms in the garden. 

Thank you Amy and Green Calgary!

Neighbour Day!

This past Saturday, June 20th, we celebrated Neighbour Day! This is a very special day in Calgary because it celebrates the anniversary of the Calgary Floods two years ago as we remember and reflect on the support of the community and kind acts of our neighbours to get the city back in working order.

In the community garden, plot owners will put a 'Please Water Me' sign in their garden if they will be away and are relying on a friendly neighbour to help water the garden. With the scorching heat, these friendly acts of kindness are necessary as many vegetable, flower and other edible plants are sensitive to the heat and cannot survive drought-like conditions. The kids took the time to weed and water our garden and then headed over to other plots to water their garden's as well.

We tried to distract some of the father's that had shown up for the day's events to make a special Father's Day Craft. Each child had the chance to make their very own garden. They planted a variety of different crops including beans, corn and flowers. We also saw an abundance of wildlife in their gardens. Butterflies, dragonflies and ladybugs galore!

Next up was snack time! We had a delightful rainbow of colours on the table with red, green and yellow bell peppers from Community Natural Foods. We also harvested some thyme, sage and chives from our garden to make some herbed cream cheese on crackers. Yum! Check out the recipe:

Ingredients

Softened Cream Cheese

Fresh Sage

Fresh Chives

Fresh Thyme

Harlic 

Directions

1. Place cream cheese in a bowl and let it sit a room temperature for a few minutes to soften

2. Collect herbs from garden, the above herbs are suggestions, add to taste, you can also used dried herbs

3. wash and cut herbs into small pieces and add to cream cheese 

4. finely grate garlic to taste and add to mixture

5. mix well and enjoy on crackers, toast, as a dip for vegetables! (for an intensified flavour, put the mixture in the fridge and let it sit overnight before consuming)

The day ended with a very fun game of hide and seek and we shared our favourites moments of the day together :)

Next week, we'll be learning all about worms!

Helpers and Pests of the Garden

Since it had rained heavily the day before, there was no need to water the garden so we decided to weed the community orchard for our opening activity of the day! We learned about why we engage in the task of weeding and how to do it properly in order to ensure the health of our fruit trees, strawberry patch and other plants in the beautiful orchard.

We collected half a garbage bag full of weeds!

One of the volunteers sneakily hid an assortment of felt and pipe cleaner animals and critters around the community garden and orchard for the kids to find. After the scavenging around to find all of them, we came together to talk about which ones are pests, which ones are helpers and why we want to naturally attract and deter animals and critters from our garden.

We then went on a walk around the garden and orchard to find evidence of pest damage on the plants. The red bumps on the currant plants indicate a aphid infestation and the holes on the potato plants and presence of many potato beetles told us that they were enjoying their feast a little too much.

Planting a variety of crops in our garden already makes it resistant to pest infestation. We also made a natural pesticide to ward off those pesky critters.

Natural Pesticide Recipe

Ingredients

5 cups water

Pinch of cayenne (chili powder)

Skins from one onion

Skins from one garlic bulb

Directions

1. Peel garlic and onion and place the skins in a glass pitcher

2. Boil water and pour over garlic and onion skins, add pinch of cayenne and stir

3. Let the concoction sit overnight, strain and pour into spray bottle

4. Spray on the leaves of plants every few days

5. Pesticide will last for several areas in a cool area

6. Leftover skins can buried into the soil of the garden nearby plants 

Aphids eating the currant plant!

Can you spot the potato beetle?

                             
After our educational journey in pests vs helpers, we read a story about a bumblebee named 'Buzz' and played a classic game of 'Capture the Crops'. Our day ended with a sharing circle about our favourite and most cherished parts of the day.

Kids Grow Returns!

We're excited to announce that Kids Grow will be returning for another season in Sunnyside! Unfortunately, due to a lack of resources and low turnout of participants, we are unable to continue programming at the Silver Springs Edible Garden. We want to warmly thank the Silver Springs community for openly welcoming us into their space and supporting the program in many ways.


We would like to invite you to join us for our first program on Saturday, June 6th from 10am-12pm at the Hillhurst Sunnyside Community Garden. 

For those who are new to Kids Grow. We are a collaborative, community based program run by volunteers. The goal of Kids Grow is to involve children in community gardening, to increase gardening and food production knowledge, to promote healthy and sustainable food choices, build environmental awareness and create a sense of community.

Every week, we take care of our garden, take part in an exciting workshop, enjoy a delicious healthy snack and then participate in some fun crafts, games and activities! All ages welcome. Children must be accompanied by an adult at all times. Programming this year runs every Saturday from June 6th to August 29th. 

We are going to encourage registration this year to better estimate participant numbers. Please register for our weekly events here below!