Spring 2017 in this issue Fairy Tale Veggies p. 2-3 Gifts p. 4 Events p. 5 Small Garden, Big Ideas p. 6 Growing Community This Spring p. 7 Ask Professor Pansy p. 8-9 Riddles & Jokes p. 10
Fairy Tale Veggies H ave you ever noticed how fairy tales are often about food or the lack of it? The old European folk tales collected by The Brothers Grimm are filled with hungry children and magical food. These brothers were orphaned and penniless while quite young so they must have been able to use some of their own experiences in their retelling of the old tales. The Brothers Grimm are not alone, Hans Christian Anderson was a gifted storyteller and his original and amazing ideas about Princesses who can feel a single pea through multiple mattresses and mermaids who want to walk on land like humans; are still capturing the imaginations of people today. by Emily Apple Many of the most famous fairy tales include a vegetable that plays a very important role in the story. There is the Princess and her sleep depriving pea, Cinderella s pumpkin coach, Jack and his purchase of magic beans, and the edible plants that doom Rapunzel to her stay in a tall tower. Fairytales are usually stories that translate well in many cultures and in any language. Everyone eats so the recurring themes of food and eating are not surprising. It is the imaginative and magical properties of these foods that is the surprise and the gift of the storyteller. This new way of seeing a dull old vegetable is a part of what keeps generations of readers and listeners coming back to these well worn stories. After reading Cinderella, the amusing shapes of winter squash fruits, pumpkins in particular, is forever connected in my imagination to the image of the bulbous coach Cinderella travels in to the Prince s Ball. In summer, the quick and abundant growth of bean vines has me staring up into the sky wondering how high they would grow if they kept growing and going? I have never put peas in under the mattress of anyone s bed to see if they would feel it in the night, but I am pretty sure I do not know any princesses. Well, you just never know I guess! 3
GIFTS Show your Junior Gardeners Club Membership card to get your free gift. EVENTS MARCH March 1lb Bulk Seed Potatoes Did you know that the seed for a potato is a potato? A new potato plant can grow out of each little dent (called an eye ). For each pound of potatoes you plant in the spring, you can harvest up to ten pounds in the fall. Sunday, March 12 th at 2pm Planting potatoes. We will plant potatoes in a biodegradable container. When you get home you can plant the potatoes, container and all into the ground or in a pot. Cost for this activity is $6.63 ask any cashier for your free Junior Gardeners Club Membership card. APRIL April Nasturtium Seed Packet Grow nasturtium flowers for bright color, and lily pad shaped leaves. Nasturtium flowers and leaves are also edible. Add them to a salad for a fun, pretty salad with a spicy tang. Float them in water or freeze in ice cubes. Or add them to a sandwich for a mustard like taste. Sunday, April 9 th at 2pm Make seed tape with us Seed tape is a clever little invention where small and hard to handle seeds are embedded into strips of paper that you can lay on the surface of your garden. This way the seeds sprout in straight lines and they will be evenly spaced not all clumped together in one spot! We will provide seeds and paper, you provide a garden plot and help them grow. We will also have seed matching games to explore and lots of different seeds to examine with magnifying glasses. Cost for this activity is $12.00. Reserve your spot in person or over the phone. MAY May Your choice of a $3.99 Vegetable Choose a $3.99, 4 inch pot or small pack vegetable to take home Lettuce, tomatoes, cukes, squash, beans. A delicious summer garden starts by picking out and planting your favorite edible. Sunday, May 21st at 2pm (meet at the JR Gardener Headquarters) Nursery tour & scavenger hunt Guided tour of Sky Nursery in FULL BLOOM! Bring your Mum, or someone else who needs a little flower and garden escape. May is a great time to see what is blooming at Sky. Colorful flowers, blooming trees, and fragrant shrubs, around every corner. We will start at 2pm at the Jr. Gardener headquarters and wind our way through the greenhouse and nursery areas. No cost for this event. RSVP so we can plan accordingly. 4 5
Grow Community this Spring Kids Can Make a Difference! We already know gardening is fun. It s worth the hard work just so that we can get our fingers in the dirt, watch seeds grow, enjoy the bugs and wildlife that visit, and harvest our own food and flowers. But did you know that you can also use your green thumb to help your community? Here are five ways you can grow community and help the Earth this spring! 6 Small Gardens, Big Ideas This is the first installment in a new series of articles that will appear in our Jr. Gardener newsletter. Our first big Idea How you can put the party back into garden work party. by Emily Apple The weather is getting warmer and our gardens are starting to wake up after a long, cold winters rest. Hard work is easier when you work together why not make it a garden work party with refreshments and games? Refreshments are always a nice addition and are a great way of saying Thank you to the garden helpers. Fresh water with mint or cucumber slices floating in the pitcher is definitely a step up from bottles of spring water. If individual bottles of water are a better choice for your gathering you might want to decorate them with stickers or have a blank name tag on each one and let your guests draw their name or a picture on their bottle. A plate of cookies or bite size cakes is easier than one large cake. It is a bit cold still for serving ice-cream but if your garden work party happens on a hot sunny afternoon, popsicles are rarely turned down by thirsty gardeners. A big bowl of fruit with apples, plums, pears, and oranges looks good and is refreshing after hauling a few wheelbarrows of compost. A mini scavenger hunt or a hidden surprise for the gardeners to discover during their labors is a fun way to reward the most observant helpers. It could be a small bouquet of flowers tied to the trunk of the tree that needs pruning or gift cards buried in the compost pile. Plant an extra row: Everyone deserves to eat fresh veggies! Choose one or two kinds of veggies you d really like to share, then plant extra. When they re ready to harvest, wash your produce and take it to your local food bank to share with others. Volunteer at a giving garden: Giving gardens need help with all kinds of important jobs like planting seeds, weeding, and taking care of plants. Check out Seattle s Giving Garden Network to find a community giving garden near you, then get in touch to learn about when and how you can volunteer. Share skills or space with a friend: Do you have friends who have never tried gardening before? Teaching friends about gardening is a great way to grow community. Plant trees for Arbor Day: Did you know that Arbor Day is coming up on April 28th? It s a whole day just to celebrate trees! There are always a lot of volunteer opportunities on Arbor Day, so find one near you! Check out the Green Seattle Partnership to find planting projects the rest of the year too. Join (or start!) a gardening club: Does your school or another organization you re part of have a garden of its own? If it doesn t, why not start one? Making a difference starts with building connections.
Ask Professor Pansy Alyssa, age 5 asks How do flower petals grow? Dear Alyssa, A flower petal is actually a special type of leaf! Even though flower petals might look different from the leaves of a plant, they grow the same way. First, a small bud appears on the stem of the plant. Slowly, the bud gets bigger until it unfolds into a leaf or blossoms into a flower. Flower petals can have a lot of different jobs. They can be like walls to protect the delicate parts plants need to make seeds. They can also be signs telling bees, butterflies, and hummingbirds where to come for a tasty drink of nectar. Chloe, age 6 asks How do strawberries grow? Jack, age 7 asks Where do veggies come from? Dear Jack, Most veggies come from farms! Farms can be all different sizes, and they can look a lot different from each other. There are tiny farms that are no bigger than an average backyard, and there are huge farms that are as big as the city of Shoreline. A person who grows food on a farm is a farmer. Sometimes stories make it seem like almost all farmers are men with light skin, but that s not really true. Farmers can be any gender, they can have any skin color, and they can be from anywhere in the world. Sometimes kids work with their families on farms, so kids can be farmers too! If you go to your local farmers market in the summer, you can meet some of the farmers who live near here. They are usually really nice, and they might give you a free sample to taste! You can ask them if you can go see their farms. Lots of small farmers like it when people come to visit. If you want to understand even better where veggies come from, you could try growing your own. And you don t even need a whole big garden! Even if you only have a little patch of sunlight, you can grow veggies in containers. Lettuce and radishes are great ones to start with. At one time all vegetables were wild plants, like weeds. People chose the best tasting weeds and saved the seeds and started planting them. Creating their own gardens. 8 Dear Chloe, Strawberries are really fun, and they re not too hard to grow. They grow on small plants that only get about half a foot tall. We have lots of different kinds here to choose from during spring if you want to give it a try! All strawberry plants need is a sunny spot, some organic vegetable food, loose soil, and water. They can grow in a container or in the ground. At first, there will just be leaves. Then, white flowers with yellow centers will grow. After they get pollinated, the flowers will slowly turn into strawberries. The berries will be small and green at first, and they will get bigger, redder, softer, and sweeter until they are ready to eat!
Riddles & Jokes 1 What comes down but never goes up? 2 What has a foot, but no legs? 3 Why didn t the tree play checkers? 4 What do you get when you cross a four leaf clover and poison ivy? 4. A rash of good luck 3. Because is was a chess nut! 2. A snail 1. Rain Make sure to check our website and the newsletter to find out what s coming up! 10