Growing Chefs! at Home: Lesson 7

Growing Chefs! staff member Christine is here to talk to you about the basics of soil and composting and why they are important for growing our food, and Chef Brennen from our volunteer team brings us into his backyard to introduce us to some of his friends.

Plus we’ve got two fun science experiments you can try at home to explore more about soil and compost!

Getting ready for exploring soil and composting - For this lesson, all you need is is your thinking cap!

Today we will talk about Soil and Composting. This is an introductory video to understanding what soil is, and why composting is so important. Not only for environmental reasons, but also for the added benefits of using compost as a delicious food for your plants at home. 

Now we know a little more about what components make up healthy soil, what compost is and why composting is important!

Below we have a great video for you with another of our incredible classroom volunteers - Chef Brennen! Brennen brings us into his backyard and introduces us to his worm farm!

Our Spring program is aimed at kids in grades 1, 2, and 3, but folks of all ages will likely learn something new! If it’s possible for an adult to be around during these lessons, that would be great. Our growing chefs might need their help a couple of times. We will let you know in the video when there are good moments to offer some help.

Related Activities:

Understanding Compost - Build your own at home Soil-arium and explore how compost breaks down creating nutrient-rich soil for our plants. Full activity outline and video found here.

Identifying Soil Type - Become a soil-ologist and examine the soil in your own yard and garden. Learn about the different components of soil and find out what grows best in each type of soil. Full activity outline and instructional video found here.

You can find this new online content here on our website, and we are making announcements about it on our social media (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram). 

Thank you so much for your patience while we reinvent ourselves and our programs.

Go Ahead and Get “Soily”: Ten Things Kids Learn in the Garden

Yesterday was a big day at my house, our windowsill garden started to SPROUT! We planted our seeds and waited... waited... waited. Just when we thought that maybe we did it wrong, POP, POP, POP, sprouts shooting up in all our pots (tomatoes, beans, and peas). Now you are probably thinking that this doesn’t sound very exciting, but two things: We have been socially isolating, so these sprouts are the only live “guests” we have had in a couple of months. We also have a 7-year-old kid, and the best thing about kids is that they appreciate how cool seeds and sprouts are. They are genuinely pumped to see those little sprouts pop out of the soil. Not only are these little sprouts adding some excitement to our life, but they are also an important part of the hands-on learning we are doing at home this spring.

What exactly might we learn from these sprouts? Here is a list:

Math: 

Counting, Patterns, Estimating, Measuring, Graphing, Calculating (volume, area and weight).

Easy “Peasy” Garden Math Activities:

• Count the seeds

• Make a pattern with seeds 

• Measure the growth of seedlings

• Graph the growth of a seedling over time

• Estimate the number of seedlings that will grow or how many (fruit/vegetables) we will harvest

• Calculate the weight of your harvest 

• Calculate the volume of soil you will need to fill planters

• Calculate surface area of a leaf  

Science: 

Seeds (and their parts), pollinators, water cycles, parts of the plant, senses and seasons (this list could go on forever). The garden is also the perfect place to conduct a little science experiment. 

Easy “Peasy” Science Experiment to try:

1) Plant seeds in three small pots label them as 1, 2 and 3:

• Give seed 1 just water (put it in a dark spot)

• Give seed 2 just sunlight (no water)

• Give seed 3 both sun and water

2) Make a hypothesis about what might happen.

3) Let the seeds grow for about 2 weeks. 

4) Keep a log of how all three seeds are growing and test your hypothesis.

* For older learners you could try other variables (feed one seed soda instead of water, play nice music for one seed, put one seed outside and one inside). 

Responsibility:

Watering, ensuring adequate sunlight, fertilizing and transplanting are great responsibilities that kids can take-on in the garden. Building a sense of responsibility will be useful in school, friendships, within your family, and in the community.  

Resiliency & Creativity:

One of the best opportunities for learning in the garden is when things don’t work out as planned. When things don’t grow (or they wilt, freeze, or overheat) kids have the opportunity to learn that it is ok to fail and also have the opportunity to think creatively to solve the challenge.

Appreciation:

An appreciation for the amount of planning, work, and care that is required to transform a seed to a fruit/vegetable. Even more appreciation for the farmers that grow food on a much larger scale.

Patience:

Remember the part at the beginning when I said that we waited ...waited ...waited? We only waited about a week, for a kid this might feel like an eternity, but it is a great way to practice being patient and a good reminder that instant is not always better. 

Ownership and Pride:

Kids will feel proud that they can tell their family, friends, and teachers about what they have cared for and grown. They might even get to share their harvest!

Go Ahead and Get “Soily”:

Soil, worms, and bugs sometimes get the bad rap as being, “eww - gross!”. Introducing kids to all the cool things soil, worms, and bugs do will make them more likely go ahead and get their hands soily. Science tells us that playing and working with soil is good for kids' mental and physical health. Grown ups too!

Dexterity:

Planting seeds, transplanting, digging, and harvesting are a great way to develop fine motor skills. This can be especially useful for younger gardeners. 

Discovery: 

Eureka! I see a tiny tomato! The garden is the perfect place to see many amazing things in action. It is a perfect place to discover shoots, buds, flowers, bugs, worms, fruit and vegetables. 

Blog Post written by Afton Bell of Growing Chefs!

Growing Chefs at Home: Lesson 6 - How do plants grow?

Chef Selma and her broccoli friend are back! This week, we will check in on our garden and chat about how plants grow! How is your windowsill vegetable garden doing?

Getting ready for this lesson

If you have a little windowsill garden going, make sure you are close to it for this video, because we will be talking about what you can see in the garden!

Materials needed for this lesson:

• Clean pair of scissors

• Colander or bowl

• Sheet of paper

• Pencil

• Coloured pencils or crayons

• Parts of a plant activity sheet (if you have access to a printer but not required to enjoy this lesson)

Today we’ll talk about plants, how they grow, and the different parts of a plant as well as think about some different vegetables and what part of the plant they might be. There are some exploring, writing, and drawing exercises in this lesson. You can expect this lesson to fill about 20 minutes. Be sure to keep scrolling past the video for some additional at-home activities!

Related Activities:

1. Get moving and stretch out with our follow-along video of our vegetable stretch!

2. How do the parts of a plant work together and how does water get from the roots to the leaves? Check out this simple science experiment we’ve outlined for you to do at home using a celery stem to track the movement of water up the plant to the leaves.

3. Our gardens are growing more and more every day now. We’ve got a fun BINGO game to get kids exploring in the garden and to teach them some new garden and plant-related words! A note that some of these terms are a bit more advanced making this a fun learning game for kids of all ages and adults alike! We’ve prepared 5 different bingo cards as well as a list of these new terms to explore here.

Our Spring program is aimed at kids in grades 1, 2, and 3, but folks of all ages will likely learn something new! If it’s possible for an adult to be around during these lessons, that would be great. Our growing chefs might need their help a couple of times. We will let you know in the video when there are good moments to offer some help.

You can find this new online content here on our website, and we are making announcements about it on our social media (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram). 

Thank you so much for your patience while we reinvent ourselves and our programs.

Garden Art Show

In Lesson 1 of our Spring Gardening and Cooking Program we talk about gardens and even plant our own windowsill garden. We hope you are planting a windowsill garden along with us at home. If you are, we would love to see drawings of what your garden will look like once it starts to grow. If you haven’t started growing a garden yet, draw us a picture of your “Dream Garden”.

Caregivers: Please take a photo of your child’s drawing (on the below printable or any piece of paper) and add it to the comments along with their name and age by April 10th to be part of our online Garden Art Show. We will feature the art on our website and our social media.

Drawing Inspiration Words: bees, vegetables, worms, flowers, fruit trees, animals, insects, soil, garden tools, sunshine, grass, seeds, watering can. 

Garden Gallary

V is for Victory, H is for Health

Have you ever heard of a victory garden? 

With the ongoing pandemic and global impacts of such an event, comparisons are being made to the last great crisis the world faced, World War Two. The prime minister himself has even made this comparison. Along with this comparison, the idea of victory gardens has also re-emerged, and become prominent across social media. Though our food supplies aren’t as at risk as in the days of world war rationing, one thing is clear, those who are not frontline workers, those of us who have been asked to stay at home, are looking for a way to contribute.

In Canada, victory gardens began in World War One. As a result of increased urbanization in the 19th and early 20th centuries, more people lived in cities and urban centres than at any other time in history, and many lacked the skills to grow home or kitchen gardens. During the First World War, to encourage and spread information on the importance of home gardens, women’s organizations sponsored expert gardeners to go into schools and teach children how to garden. These home gardens were then brought back again during the Second World War. Presumably, the children who received schoolroom teaching about gardening in world war one retained that knowledge once again for wartime use. 

Teenage girls in Maple Ridge clearing a local plot of land for a garden, 1941. (Maple Ridge Museum and Community Archives P04889)

Young girl helping to plant kitchen garden outside her home in Maple Ridge, 1945. (Maple Ridge Museum and Community Archive P04936)

Today, with our current crisis being vastly different from a world war, I suggest a rechristening of victory gardens to ‘Health Gardens.” We are not at war and what we are striving for isn’t victory in battle, but victory in health. Good health to our friends, family, healthcare workers, frontline workers, and everyone all over the world. Our health gardens are looking towards that hope for a COVID-19 free world. They are taking advantage of the spring season, a time of rejuvenation and rebirth. Just like with world war victory gardens, they mean more than providing necessary food, they also feed our mental health. 

It is spring and the world is blooming. In this time of self-isolation, we are all working to maintain our physical and mental health, planting a health garden works towards both of those ends. A health garden can be a cleared space in a backyard, in pots on a balcony, even in a jar on the windowsill. Plant the end off of your store-bought lettuce, plant the seeds out of your lemon, plant something, and watch it grow. Just like with victory gardens, the victory doesn’t come when the vegetables are ready to eat, it comes with the hope we feel watching the new life we planted taking shape. 

Our guest blogger, Shea Henry, is the curator of the Maple Ridge Museum and Community Archives, Maple Ridge B.C. Thank you, Shea!

Five Reasons to Plant Your First Garden This Spring!

Spring has sprung! With the arrival of this new season comes warm breezes, new blossoms, blue skies and… the necessity to maintain physical distance from other humans?! These new measures aren’t ideal for a picnic in the park, but there are plenty of other fun ways to embrace the extra free time you might have. Perhaps planting a garden might be up your alley! With the help of our wonderful student volunteers from the TREK program, we’ve put together five reasons to get your hands in the soil:

1) GET OUTDOORS AND LEARN NEW SKILLS

Gardening is a fantastic excuse to get outside... so get out there and load up on fresh air and mood-boosting Vitamin D! If you don’t have outdoor space, that’s no problem; windowsill gardens are easy to set up and maintain with a few basic supplies, and they can be just as successful - just ask the kids who have participated in our programs! There is so much to learn about this satisfying hands-on activity, and the best way to learn is to do. Having a young helper makes this activity all the more engaging. 

2) IMPROVE YOUR MENTAL AND PHYSICAL HEALTH

Have you been staring at a screen all day? If you’re looking for a reason to get up, clear your mind, and move your body, a trip to the garden might be in order. Did you know that contact with soil is thought to naturally raise serotonin levels - gardening can literally make people happier! So get up and bury your hands in the soil for a natural pick-me-up. 

3) GROW YOUR OWN FOOD

Is there anything more satisfying than eating a pea plucked fresh from the vine? Or fresh lettuce that you’ve watched grow? Not only do you know exactly what you’re eating and where it came from, but you’re ensuring you have healthy, chemical-free food at hand. Not to mention, the sense of pride that comes with being a little bit more self-sufficient!

4) HELP THE ENVIRONMENT

When you’re nurturing a garden, you’re creating urban greenspace that helps to clean the air we breathe and supports local pollinators! While beautifying your home and neighbourhood, you’ll also be making some bees and butterflies very happy. 

5) BUILD COMMUNITY

Whether you’re growing plants inside or outdoors, gardening is a great way to bond with neighbours and fellow hobby-ists. Gardens provide a lovely physical space to connect, and also a common talking point! There are many people who are happy to share tips and knowledge. 

---

Are you ready to start your own garden? Our friends at West Coast Seeds and GardenWorks can help get you set up with some seeds and gardening equipment (delivered to your door). Happy growing!