A group of kids are a growing concern to the Youth and Teen Center at Whidbey Island Naval Air Station. As one part of the popular program for children of active duty service members, a Garden Club raises vegetables, flowers and herbs.
The garden doesn’t cover much area but it’s packed with lush plants, color and movement as Garden Club members learn “science with a smile,” Master Gardener Jane Adams said.
“It’s important for kids to learn all the enjoyable things about gardening: from digging and planting to harvesting and eating. Plus watching everything grow,” Adams said.
For several years, Adams and other Master Gardeners have been helping the Garden Club grow.
“Miss Jane is just wonderful,” Center Director Melissa Hailey said. “And the kids love her. The center couldn’t have a garden without her and everyone she brings.”
The club meets Tuesday afternoons to learn a “plant of the week” and get directions on what to pick, or plant, in their garden. After a few minutes inside, kids rush to their urban oasis on Regatta Drive.
First, they stop at their compost bin where Master Gardener Sallie Peterson shows them just what the worms have been doing.
A faint, complex aroma drifts out as Peterson lifts the cover. But that didn’t keep Desiree Hill, Le’Ashley Harmel and Jordan Harmel from examining the contents of the bin.
“Look at how much broken pumpkin they ate,” Desiree said.
“It didn’t take them long,” Le’Ashley added.
The trio hurried to join the rest of the club in the garden.
Looking around the garden
Along a fence, Kentucky Wonder and Red Runner beans run up, over and through chain link and wind about a bean “teepee” of bamboo stakes. Green-bladed corn rustles next to a variety with burgundy stalks and stems. Tomatoes in varied sizes, and shades of ripeness, grow in planters of old tires, their fuzzy, acrid-smelling vines draped over arches of plastic tubing. Pumpkins bulge and slowly turn from dark green to golden under canopies of broad leaves. Nastursiums and sunflowers splash a hill with sultry colors.
Kids dash from plot to plot, seeing what’s new. Soon they turn serious: It’s picking time. So many plants and such brilliant colors might entice other kids to trample, push and pull. But garden club members know to reach carefully, to pull slowly and to watch their feet.
Desiree and Le’Ashley delicately pinch tomatoes from vines.
“This one’s reddest!”
“No, this one is!”
“This bean hid. See how big it got?” points out Olivia Miner, 13, holding up a several-inches-long Kentucky Wonder.
“It might be too tough to eat,” Adams said. “But we’ll try it.”
Miner placed the bean in a basket where it dwarfed the other pods.
Under the shade of poplars, kids hoe out weeds then plant cool weather seeds: radishes, spinach, onions.
“Radishes are yucky, yucky,” Kaitlyn Floyd, 7, said as she trickled tiny seeds into the ground.
“Not as yucky as onions,” her partner, Alexandria Lewis, 8, said while she weeded an adjoining bed.
“Most of the time parents are amazed at what vegetables their kids will try from the garden,” Belle Akins, a Youth Center adviser, said from her position manning the water hose. “Kids will try what they’ve grown. Vegetables they would never touch at home.”
Akins said besides tasting new foods, kids in the club learn to respect the plants, the earth and other people. “Once they see how hard they work on nurturing a plant, they don’t step on what others are doing.”
The kids may not keep their rooms at home particularly tidy, she said, but they will take care of the garden. Often kids come on weekends to check a particular plant.
“They learn about reaping what they sow,” Akins said. “And they see how that applies here, at school, at home.”
Science taught with smiles
Kids aren’t the only ones learning from the garden. Belle said she’s learned more about science from Adams than she ever learned in school.
That’s not surprising. Adams has degrees in biology and plant physiology as well as a Ph.D. in microbiology.
In addition to gardening lessons, Adams plans experiments. The club’s latest experiment is sprouting coconuts indoors. Kids are learning such a big, dense seed takes time to sprout. One coconut is just beginning to develop a crack.
Earlier this year, Adams gave the club a very small lesson. Kids swabbed different surfaces in the building, rubbed the swabs on agar plates and waited to see what grew after an incubation period. They discovered that the most bacteria in the building were located on a door handle for a restroom. The least bacteria were found on a club member’s glasses.
“It’s important for kids to learn we’re sharing this planet with many small creatures, some good, some bad,” Adams said.
From garden
to kitchen
After everything was picked, watered and weeded, the club headed inside to sample their work. Sunflowers of gold, umber and orange nodded in vases. Coin-sized slices of tomatoes covered a plate. Corn was boiled minutes after being picked. And Miss Jane brought out a bowl of bean salad, made with beans from the garden.
“When can we pick our pumpkins, Miss Jane?” Alexandria asked.
“Not too much longer and we can,” Adams said. “Soon it will be time to plant potatoes and get ready for winter gardening.”
