Mud, Mud and More Mud!

Moylan Elementary School Students good and muddied after a day at GROW It is definatly spring here in Hartford and the GROW season is underway. GROW Hartford has partenerd with the Molyan Elementary School Masterminds, an afterschool program, for the next month. These fourth graders will be comming every week to help out in the garden and discover that their favorite foods, everything from fried Okra to ice cream comes from the earth. We had a blast on Friday planting tomatoes and weeding. It was really muddy in the garden from the latest deluge, but that didn't stop these students from digging up worms and trying to catch the spiders scurrying acros the plastic mulch. While they learned that tomatoes will grow fruits just like the ones in the stores, I learned that a muddy flooded garden is not a problem at all... -Shannon

Kids at Earthday exploring the worm bin and worm composting! Note: worms and kids are smiling...

A living necklace

Jerica making living seed necklaces at EarthDay. Earth Day this year was extremley fun. I didn't think at first that so many people would come until the huge group of children came in. We made seed necklaces that were made out of beans, a piece of tissue, and sticky contact paper. We did this activity to get kids to see that food can be fun and educational.The kids and their parents could plant the beans once they start to sprout. The activity was cool because the kids were interested and ready to learn how to take care of their necklaces. We put the beans on a wet piece of paper that we then put on sticky paper and closed up into a square. Jerica Sandiford

National Youth Service Day

National youth service day youth! From Crunch Time (OPP), Aspira, and Grow Hartford pose after an awesome day of hard work in the garden for National Youth Service Day! My experience for today was working with teens my own age who had no idea what they were into. I never saw so many teen in one place that were ready to work at something they didn't know much about. I enjoyed the interaction from the mix of people that volunteered. Thanks very much guys for helping us at the garden! National Youth Service day is a great experience for anybody. Jerica Sandiford

Working Hard

Ladies and gentle man it getting hot outside and you know what that means. It time to plant! Today was a good day for working outside. Weeding is one of the most frequent job done at grow. So to be weed free we hand It was a beautiful day in the garden, weeding, adding compost and mulching weed then mulch. These are our volunteer hard at work helping us prepare our soil for the next couple of weeks before we plant in our beds. Jerica Sandiford

Our New Compost

Beautiful pile This is our newest compost at the Grow Hartford site. The compost pile is waist high and is made up of leaves, peppers, cellery, ground coffee and hay. It was alot of work but with team work the task was easier. Our visitors were students from Uconn that were studing nutrtion. We first went to the Fresh Impression comapany and loaded the items into our truck (four large barrels). Second we then brought them back to the garden. Third we layer the spot where we wanted the compost pile to be and worked from there. After that the pile got higher and higher as we added the many layers. After a while the copmost was to the height we wanted and we were done lastly covering it with hay so that the rodents and other animals get to it. Jerica Sandiford

Jerica participating on a panel on childhood obesity at the Legislative Office Building where she met Morgan Spurlock of Supersize Me fame. Also with her were other youth participants, legislators and professionals in nutrition and health.