Educational Programs - KIDS CAN GROW in York County
Kids Can Grow
Hands-on gardening experience for children aged 7 to 12 in York County
Universityof Maine Cooperative Extension’s hands-on Kids Can Grow program gets children excited about gardening.
Kids Can Grow – Garden at Home
Kids learn and practice gardening in a series of six monthly sessions from April through September at the UMaine Extension York County [1]demonstration gardens. They are mentored and inspired by a team of Master Gardener Volunteers [2]. Successfully raising vegetables, flowers, and herbs builds self-esteem and starts children on a journey that can become a satisfying, lifelong hobby.
Kids Can Grow teaches children
- how to choose, plant, and grow nutritious vegetables, herbs, and beautiful flowers for their families;
- the basics of good nutrition and food safety; and
- how to build and plant a 3′ x 5′ raised bed garden at home, with materials, seedlings, and amended topsoil supplied by us.
Kids Can Grow has been inspiring young gardeners for more than 12 years!
UMaine Extension educators and Master Gardener Volunteers have been teaching children how to grow fresh produce and flowers in our York Countydemonstration gardens since 1999. All produce grown in our Kids Can Grow demonstration gardens is donated to the Maine Harvest for Hunger [3] project. Children learn responsibility, for they have ownership of their home garden and the produce it creates. Through the monthly sessions, children learn how to seed, thin, transplant, fertilize, weed, water, and harvest their own gardens. Kids also create garden crafts such as terracotta garden stones imprinted with plants, stones, etc., earth buddies (see photo below), or “web sites” (spider houses to attract beneficial insects).
Nutrition education is an important part of Kid’s Can Grow.
Children learn about nutrition and food safety in our program. They create “harvest pizzas” using produce from their own home gardens.
Kids Can Grow is also a specialty 4-H Club.
Each Kids Can Grow participant is enrolled as a 4-H member so they can display their garden produce, posters or journals about what they have learned, their garden craft items, and/or samples of preserved foods such as tomato sauce at the Acton Fair, our county agricultural fair, held in August.
The cost of Kids Can Grow is only $25 per child, thanks in part to generous support from sponsors like the York County Master Gardener Association and local farms and businesses.
Important dates for Kids Can Grow in York County, 2013:
April 5 – Applications are due in the office.
April 23 – Parent Orientation.
April 27, May 11, June 1, July 20, August 17, September 21 – Saturday KCG classes.
For more information about the program contact Frank Wertheim, Extension Educator, UMaine Extension York County Office, 21 Bradeen Street, Suite 302, Springvale, ME 04083, 207-324-2814 or email susan.tkacik@maine.edu [4]. The 2013 Kids Can Grow Brochure and 2013 application are also accessible here.
Information about Kids Can Grow in other Maine Counties.
Earth Buddy