Introducing Your Children to Their Food Roots

[Photo courtesy of Jennifer Getting Jameslyn, Mixed Greens]

Article by Lexie Stoia

On an unusually warm winter day (there have been a lot of those this past winter in Ohio), I had the joy of taking "Plants For Life," an after school garden club, on an exploration. We visited the Garden of Communion, a community garden on the near east side of Columbus. The purpose of the excursion was to explore the garden's hoophouse full of growing vegetables; to show the children, "Yes, you can harvest fresh produce in Ohio in December."

Due to the wet weather, slugs were helping themselves to fresh spinach and various kinds of leaf lettuces. This did not deter the children from munching on the leaves of Swiss chard I offered them. Not only did they think the chard was "tasty," I had to hold them back from making a feast out of the chard patch (no salad dressing necessary).

Anyone who has seen the curiosity of a child in a garden would not be surprised. Still, there is a bias that kids don't like vegetables. It's more likely they don't like vegetables the way they are used to receiving them — colorless iceberg lettuce poured from a bag, tomatoes whose texture could be confused with the crunchiness of an apple.

School and youth programs are realizing the community or school garden makes a great classroom, covering obvious lessons (science, health and teamwork) and not-so-obvious lessons (vocational training, economics and the arts).

[To learn more, read the full article in the Mar/Apr 2007 issue of Touch the Soil™.]