​Ripley junior horticulturalists gather harvest from their garden plot in Ripley

On a beautiful, sunny August Saturday, the Ripley and District Horticultural Society’s “For Our Youth” Club met at the Bruce Botanical Food Gardens to tour the gardens, sample different food grown there and harvest the vegetables we had planted in the spring!

Introductions were made with our host Olivia, the gardens manager, who welcomed us warmly. After attendance was taken, the club memberes shared which vegetable or fruit was their favourite to grow and eat. We then headed to the club’s garden plot as one big group. Wow, was everyone excited to see the garden’s bounty! Peas, flowers, tomatoes, oh my! So much to pick and look at.

After a lesson on how to save seed for next year’s planting, we tied some ribbons to a few extra large pole beans to mark them as seed-savers. After that, the children got right to work! The peas were stripped, basil and parsley snipped, and all the ripe tomatoes, peppers, strawberries, zucchini, eggplant, watermelons picked. Leader Bonnie helped cut the strawflower bouquets for everyone to take home to dry. A few marigolds were cut as well for a fresh flower bouquet.

Leaders Natasha and Brad showed the kids how to use different tools to pull weeds in the garden.The kids checked the corn they had planted and determined it wasn’t quite ready. After harvesting, weeding and watering our garden, we moved on to the next activity: a full tour of the food gardens.

Olivia pointed out different plants for the children and taught them about all kinds of different things that grow in the gardens, along with what the benefits are of having botanical food gardens in our community. Everyone tried grapes, herbs, ground cherries and other interesting plants. Did you know that everything growing in the gardens is edible and comes from heirloom seeds?

We gathered some more herbs for a recipe we would be making with leader Bonnie. After we got all our ingredients together, the children made dip for the vegetables we harvested. With leader Bonnie’s guidance, Dilly Dip and Garden Goddess Dips were concocted and stirred. Next, Olivia showed the children how to make flat breads, which were cooked in the mud oven. It sure smelled good.

The warm bread was used to try different spreads made from ingredients grown at the gardens - Lilac jelly, Sour Cherry jelly, Saskatoon Berry jelly and and Sea Buckthorn jelly were a hit with everyone! While the kids were having their flatbread snack, leader Brad showed everyone an eggplant versus tomato science experiment: both vegetables look very similar on the outside, but when cut open, they are actually so different. We didn’t know eggplants came in such different sizes, colours and shapes.

As a final exciting snack, we cut into our watermelons! They were perfect - sweet, juicy and cool. We were surprised how cool the melons were coming directly from the garden under the hot sun. The kids ate their fill of vegetables and dip and no one went home hungry.

Baskets of leftover beans, tomatoes and peas were sent home, along with frozen bags of grated zucchini that leader Rhonda had thoughtfully prepared earlier in the month when our garden produced giant zucchinis.(Seriously, they looked like baseball bats!) The “For Our Youth” garden produced around 50 cups of grated zucchini. Way to grow, kids! What a fantastic August meeting.

A big thank you to Olivia for hosting us, sharing all her wonderful horticultural knowledge and for the fun mud oven demonstration.

Our September meeting will take place at leader Kim’s farm where we will use our harvest of tomatoes and basil to make different kinds of salsa, and enjoy a special presentation by Meredith Watson of the Lake Huron Coastal Centre.

Interested in seeing what the fun is all about? Contact Kimberlee Feick Lowry at kimberlee1072@yahoo.ca.