Growing Together: Open Forum

Hi all! April is KidsGardening's annual Kids Garden Month celebration and contest! Just like the past couple of years, we're holding a contest for adults here in the Kids Garden Community.

For this year's contest, we want your sincere, sarcastic, funny, or inspirational answers to the question: "What do you love about gardening in your region?"

Can you garden outside all year long? Do you get hours of exercise covering and uncovering your plants to protect them from frost? Is your garden on the monarch migration route? Does your state grow the best blueberries? Are you just itching to pick veggies at dusk with all your mosquito friends? 

For all of April, you can add your answer here as a text response, photos, video, song and dance, artwork, or however you want to convince us that your region is awesome (or not!) for gardening!

At the end of the month, FOUR respondents will be randomly selected to receive a goody bundle of 1 Back to the Roots mushroom grow kit, seed packets, and garden tools.

(P.S. Learn more about the kids contest hosted by KidsGardening here.)

I am the manager of the agriculture department for a school district in the state of Alaska we have 7 schools in are district and all participate in agriculture in many different ways. We do many different forms of gardening each campus has a greenhouse and outdoor garden beds. 2 schools do aquaponics gardening, 1 school does hydroponics gardening and the others mostly plant in their dirt beds outside. 1 of the campuses has an orchard that has 15 fruit trees that produce fruit every year and we hold an event with all of the other campuses in the fall to harvest and preserve the fruit. We grow fruits and vegetables to feed our school lunch program and students sell to their communities whatever is not given to the lunch program. I love gardening in the region I'm in because we have the resources to grow year round in Alaska and produce for the communities and schools around us. 

What I love about gardening in my area is growing food within the city limits. We do urban farming. Many of my neighbors are renters. I have introduced them to container gardening. It is so easy. Both young and old enjoy it. 

We are in central Missouri and are fortunate enough to grow year-round using our high tunnels. We see kids daily ages PreK-4th grade and it's always a whirlwind!  We have had some really warm days and that makes me want to plant everything outside!  Yesterday was 78 *F and the temps are steadily dropping and we are expecting temps in the 30's tonight!  We just spent the last hour covering our baby plants!  Honestly, that's one of the things I love about gardening in Mid-Missouri, you are always kept on your toes. It forces you to think outside the box and strategize how you can grow year-round.  We have tomatoes and cucumbers already planted inside one hoop house with water walls around them and of course cover cloth for nights when it gets colder.  Pics are planting potatoes, the baby tomatoes and Jr. Beta Club during a work day in the garden.

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Hope Sickmeier
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I love when the Garden system works naturally.  I nearly squealed in delight when I found 2 tomato hornworms on my plants and realized they had already been parasitized by white wasps.  I didn't even have to do anything to manage my pest problem, nature had taken care of it for me.  Sometimes being slow on the uptake has it's advantages!

Yesterday was 70, today is 29. When gardening in Wisconsin, you'll never know what you find!

I love it here, but the weather definitely keeps us on our toes. I never seem to know if it's truly safe to put plants outside. That being said, I love having seasons and the different kinds of produce that come with each one. I work at a summer camp, and it's awesome to have the kids watch and anticipate the growing vegetables and fruits. 

Gardening in our area can be very challenging!  You could say we have about 9 months of winter with about an average of 3 feet of snow on the ground throughout the winter!  But we still love to garden and we love our pollinators!  Idaho's state insect is the monarch butterfly!  We use hoop houses and frost covers to protect vegetables in town and for pollinator gardens we luckily have many species that require that frost-freeze cycle to start their germination so we have some beautiful native wildflowers that we can grow in the summer for our pollinators in our high alpine location of McCall, Idaho where we sit almost a mile-high!  We have challenges from the mule deer that like to come through and nibble on plants, but again- our native plants are resilient!  Photos attached include one of where our pollinator garden is located (under early winter snow) and a photo of when we first planted it!  Gardeners here are very dedicated and passionate!  

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Amanda Grant
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I think I've loved gardening all my life. I started my first home garden while living in Southern California, and then later in Eastern Ontario, Canada, and now in Southwest Virginia. All of these areas bring their own challenges. In 2020, I started teaching cooking and gardening classes at the Gainsboro YMCA and have found my passion. Even though our garden is small, we have managed to improve it over the years, adding raised beds with walkways and a greenhouse, and last year we turned it into a multicultural garden, growing produce from around the world. The students cook what they grow, and then share the leftover produce with a local church and community shelter.

The most satisfying part of the garden is watching the children's wonderment as they plant seeds, learn about composting and pollination, and then harvest what they have grown. They cook healthy, budget-conscious recipes, and most times are willing to try it all, even taking recipes home for their families to make.

Then why wouldn't I love gardening?

I started really getting into gardening about 3 years ago. Since then I've started and directed a local community garden, worked on school gardens, and am a current Master Gardener intern.

A lot of what I hear in Oklahoma is, "If you can garden in Oklahoma,  you can garden anywhere!" We have the range of the crazy hot weather in the spring to random artic blasts of below zero in the winter. The worst however, is the wind. The wind is extreme her, not to mention the tornadoes!

Despite all that, we have managed to be super successful with gardening here, and it has been a fun challenge. This year I'm really working on gardening with my children and getting their school looking beautiful! 

Gardening in Massachusetts means rolling with the seasons and finding wonder and awe with my students every day. I love and struggle with the puzzle of engaging students outdoors in the winter, and I cherish all the small summer firsts, from a child's first time seeing a butterfly emerge to their first taste of a new vegetable from the garden. 

Gardening in Virginia - I love that we have a decent growing season (especially for working in a school!) and that our climate lends itself to a diverse range of native plants and veggies. I don't really love the rock hard clay soil (at least in our area of VA) and the brutal heat that comes in early august when school starts. I wear an apron to hold my tools…. but also to cover the sweat when going in and out of the building haha! 

I have 14 grandchildren and what I love about gardening is they all love eating from the garden and orchard. My four year old grandson eating supper states, "Can you box this up and can I take it home?"  Another five year old grandson stops to pick up more of my frozen beets which he loves.  Sitting under the fruit trees with my ten year old granddaughter she states, "Your house is the yummy house!" Fresh fruits and vegetables taste better than store bought!

I love gardening in Maine! The very distinct 4 seasons brings us through the wheel of the year as a reminder to observe in ourselves what we observe in the garden.  Working with children to grow food opens up your eyes to so many little details we may overlook as adults. They are the first ones to find the wild blueberries and strawberries growing, see little snails and slugs on the kale leaves, point out that the chives are back, and make sure to harvest 2 cherry tomatoes each time; one for them and one for a friend. I love to watch their joy in the garden, everything being so familiar but still so new! We planted some peas yesterday and they loved digging holes to plant each seed, only able to carry a few in their tiny hands they so carefully placed them in the holes that they dug. Involving the children in the growing of the food to the chopping of the vegetables and making their meals makes each meal so special and so enjoyable! I think it is extremely important to always include children in gardening and no matter where you live to show appreciation for things big and small in the garden and on the land you are working with!

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Tyra Howes
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 I love gardening in my region. see why! 

Attachment(s)

1my garden.pdf   708 KB 1 version

Gardening is Western New York is always full of surprises! It could be the snow that falls in May, or the 70+ degree temperature in February.  I love how gardening awakens all my senses and makes me thankful to be outside. The sound of the birds, the smell of the earth and flowers, the feel of worms or soil, the beauty to see in the greenery with splashes of color , and of course the delicious food we grow and eat.  

Hello from Pennsylvania.  Gardening here can be challenging due to the crazy weather swings.  Some years we are hot and dry, some it rains every day of summer.  Yesterday was 80 next week will be mid 60s.  I run a greenhouse program at our school and some years our plants do fantastic and sometimes they get fried when they sprout.  I also incorporate gardening in our therapeutic riding program.  We try to plant things the horses like to eat.  My home garden is a hodge podge of things that  I love to harvest every year.  I have my son help me in the garden and last year we used 2x4s to segment our garden.  

I am excited to plant our new garden today with the 3rd and 1st grade students at Dunwoody Elementary in Atlanta, Georgia.  I don't know a lot about gardening, but I can put the people together who do know.  I like seeing the kids enjoying being outside.  Today will be so great to be the first time to plant our new garden beds!

Living in northern Wyoming, there are lots of things to dislike about gardening (especially the short growing season), but I love spring watching the new plants come up and seeing all the green coming back to our area. We also have a man-made pond that we maintain and clean each year. It started out as a drudge, we were upset that our supposedly self-maintaining pond had to be cleaned so thoroughly annually, but it has become a right of passage into summer. We take a full day and clean the pond, clean the gardens around the pond, and enjoy time together as a family.  We are planting more natives this year, so it will be a great joy to see how they do over the next winter as well. I have passed down my love of gardening to my kids, my students, and many adults! It is just a joy to get your hands in the dirt and see what comes of it!

I LOVE gardening in Ohio because all the students are off for summer break while our gardens flourish. Some light sarcasm ;) but I truly love gardening and spending time in the garden with students. 

I am a librarian in a public Middle school in an urban area.   Since we are located in Florida, the weather is usually quite conducive to planting year round, as long as we adhere to specific regional planting maps.   My students are in grades 6-8 and recently, we started a garden club, to encourage students to apply STEM to gardening in hopes it would address food insecurity and the food desert in my students area.   There are many bodegas in their neighborhood but a grocery store with fresh fruits and veggies is a distance away.  Students created the Young Gardeners club and have been growing herbs, lettuce, radishes and tomatoes all year.   What I love about gardening in my region is the weather and the fact that we can use hydroponic kits to grow many different types of veggies, and it encourages our students to eat more vegetables.  

I am a pre-k teacher at Mt. Carmel Elementary School in Huntsville, AL. During my second year at Mt. Carmel, I asked if I could help take care of our school courtyard. Now, five years later, we are wrapping up our first year with the "Courtyard Club" which consists of three teachers and twelve students from second and third grade. Our courtyard has a running creek, turtle pond,  bog pond, bubble rock, pollinator garden, weather station, amphitheater, and a hands-on learning area where we have a pumpkin patch, loofa garden, and have started growing vegetables for our class pets to eat. Even though we have so much, it is still a smaller space located in the middle of the school. This year the courtyard club worked very hard to make the courtyard a more interesting and beautiful place for our students and staff. They have helped to make the water flow better in the creek, cleaned out the old turtle pond pump, installed a new one, planted new flowers and plants, planted vegetables, strawberries, and two blueberry bushes and even designed a sunflower fort. We also had a scarecrow contest and sent out invitations for everyone to add a painted rock to the courtyard. It has been a successful first year and I couldn't be more proud of these students!

I am completing a post-grad service year in Spokane Washington. I am from a humid, overcast valley on the east coast and even though our USDA Zones are similar, gardening in the high desert in the inland northwest is a big change for me! I am building a garden from a vacant lot that will be used as a teaching garden after my service year is over and I head back to Pennsylvania. It's bittersweet that I won't be able to work with our kiddos in this space, but I am committed to getting everything ready to go so the program can get off the ground running come fall. I've gardened before, but never on this scale and I learned so incredibly much just in the planning process. I've writing handbooks, garden plans, planting schedules, native plant guides, and activities curated specifically to our garden for our future kid gardeners. Now that spring is here, all of my months of planning, research, and scheduling are paying off and I'm beginning to see huge changes transform a flat empty space into a beautiful multifunctional space, ready for native plants, vegetables from all over the world, and spaces for kids to grow and learn! Gardening in such a new and different climate is making me confront a lot of things I took for granted as standard practices, for instance My starters need a LOT more water here than back home, but the amount of sun I'm getting has sped up my sprouting process twofold (I probably should have waited a couple extra weeks and now my kitchen is overwhelmed with fava beans, squash tendrils, and giant pumpkin leaves and my soil hasn't arrived yet!). This will equip me to be a better, more informed, and more intune with the environment wherever I end up next year and in the years after. 

The sweltering heat and bug bites are no fun in NC!  Who knew vegetables could get sunburn too!?

But early mornings in the garden with my students are a great way to learn skills, build relationships, and make a positive impact on our community.  Not everyone wants to water on hot days or get dirty during harvest, but they all love the fresh produce our edible lanscape produces!

For most of my life, I couldn't keep a plant alive to save my soul.  Any plant given to me was passed to my grandma.  Then in 2012, I decided to get my Master's Degree in Biology, Conservation, & Teaching and decided it was time to grow my own green thumb.  I began by reading hundreds of gardening books, and then slowly started to apply what I'd learned.  Now, I can keep any plant alive, and gardening is my passion! 

Gardening in Northeast Ohio is always an adventure because the weather is never consistent or predictable, and what I like best about it is that it is a never ending task.  There is always something that needs done, new things to learn, and problems to solve.  It keeps me young!  I love integrating fruits and vegetables into my pollinator beds, accenting with rocks that I collect while walking in my woods, and watching everything grow and spread.  I even have a thug bed that contains plants that like to spread all mixed together.  I also enjoy sharing what I've learned with my students!

A few favorite garden pics.