The Gift of the Garden

The Gift of a Garden. I’m Greg Martin with today’s Line On Agriculture.

My grandfather loved to garden and he passed on that love to me. There is nothing quite like being able to step outside and pick fresh from the vine tomatoes or pull the husk off a juicy, golden yellow ear of corn. Now we are looking forward to passing that love down to our two grandkids. The American Farm Bureau Foundation for Agriculture recently partnered with the federal government to plant a garden in Washington, D.C. With the help of the foundation, pre-school kids attending daycare at several federal facilities are planting and maintaining the garden. Sara Murphy, a horticulturalist with the General Services Administration is overseeing the project.

MURPHY: The plan is to do a sensory garden, so less focused on vegetable production and more about engaging the senses, looking at the plants, touching them, smelling them, listening to the sounds in the garden. We’re going to be watering, we’re going to be using a composting machine, tasting, obviously there’s going to be some edibles.
For the first crop, the kids got to plant fennel, rosemary, thyme, blueberries and broccoli, just to name a few. Murphy says plans are in the works to expand the focus of the garden in subsequent years, but for now she is keeping it simple for the kids.

MURPHY: Taking a little bit of the burden of maintenance off of those folks involved by not doing a super intensive vegetable garden and doing more water, drought-tolerant herbs and more low-maintenance plants. So we’re taking it one day at a time and hoping that it’ll be beneficial for all involved.

The American Farm Bureau Foundation is optimistic the garden project will give urban kids a better understanding of farming. Farm Bureau’s Tracy Grondine got in on the action at the inaugural planting of the garden and heard first-hand what the young agriculturalists think of the new project.

GRONDINE & KIDS: What are you guys planting? I planted a potato. Ok, what did you plant? Potato. What’s your favorite vegetable? Uh, strawberries. How do you like to eat strawberries? On the bottom and the top. Not on the grass on the top. Are you guys having fun today? Yeah, I eat the tops and the bottoms and the middles. The middles have juice. I drink the juice inside them.

Now is a great time to start planting that garden for you and your kids. That’s today’s Line On Agriculture. I’m Greg Martin on the Ag Information Network.