 And everybody, we're going to wrap up tonight's talk with a presentation on how to get our kids involved with gardening. And here to share with us her ideas is Kelsey Deckard. Kelsey is the horticulture agent who serves Burley and Morton counties. She graduated from NDSU with a bachelor of science degree in agriculture education with a minor in extension education. She loves answering questions from the public. And she loves educating gardeners from all ages, including kids. So Kelsey, welcome to the forums. Thank you, Tom. And just thanks to everybody joining us tonight on the last session of the special topics of spring paper forum. So as Tom said tonight, I'm going to visit with you guys about gardening with youth and focusing on ways to engage our youth and just briefly talking about skills that they will develop from gardening. So why garden with youth? As there's just so many benefits such as sensory, stimulation, literacy, fine motor skills, farm to table, healthier eating and living extension and teachers across the state have found that there's a huge disconnect with our youth understanding farm to table and just really knowing the source of where their food comes from. Statistically speaking, you don't eat the recommended amount daily amount of vegetables and fruit and they're not physically active enough on a daily basis. So even though I don't have a lot of experience gardening yet with my own children, I have garden with all ages of youth through various programs and one being the junior master gardener program through extension and I'm going to share some stories about that tonight as well. And I'm just going to say, regardless of what kind of youth or the age of the youth, they are always going to be excited to have produce to take home and they really do get a feeling of accomplishment seeing the whole process through from starting at seed. So to kind of start, like I said, youth will develop sensory skills in the garden, especially if they're younger, seeing some of the plants for the first time. I have a picture of my daughter from last year. She's going to be about two this year here at the end of the month. But it's a great option to let children explore with taste, smell, feel and touch. And like I said, a garden is going to provide a lot of variety for each youth to explore with their senses. So definitely get them out there, get them exposed to those plants and the different vegetables. Now, with gardening with youth, you can improve literacy. There's so many garden booked, themed or themed books available. I just shared kind of on this slide some different ones that are out there. And again, if any of your children are like my daughter who's going to be two, she loves when we sit down and read. And she loves looking at the pictures and you know, even just, I guess, learning a little bit bigger vocabulary. And then older youth, when you do read with them, too, they're going to understand the theme within the book and they're going to connect it back to the garden or vegetables that they're growing. So again, just a few different books, but definitely go out there and explore. There's a ton of them. So great way to start off gardening with youth is to start seed with them. It's a really fun way for them to see how plants and transplants that are available in the store started. And to make it more engaging, explore different options for containers. So on this photo, you can see you could use coffee filters, yogurt containers, toilet paper roll holders, egg cartons, eggshells, even newspaper. I've seen some other options as far as even ice cream colons. So there's just a lot of options more than just your traditional trays. And if you've never started seeds on your own, it's a great way for both you and your youth to learn and explore together. Making gardening fun for youth is really easy today. You can purchase kid size garden tools, gloves, almost anything. And with younger youth, again, they're going to just love that they can match you, whether it's they're matching grandma, grandpa, mom, dad, aunt, even just anybody. And so you can see again in this picture, you have some tools and gloves, but you also have other ways to explore further in your garden. So, you know, looking at bugs, even looking for butterflying nets, the root viewer is really nice, especially to explore like fibrous versus tap roots with your youth. And in today's market, there's so many products that are geared with the popular characters that kids are familiar with. So anytime they have it on there, a favorite character, they're going to gravitate towards that item, and they're just going to love it, regardless of what it is. The best way to show and explain to youth is to give them the actual tools, maybe go through like an identification of the tools, and then you demonstrate how to use it and have them themselves also try it as well. So this is going to be a good way for them to develop their motor skills, along with encouraging that learning. And even just like I said, tool identification. So there's nothing wrong with having your kids play in the dirt while you garden, but it's going to be best if you have them help you and work in the garden as well. So the process of digging, planting, weeding, it's going to give them like a tie into the garden process. And again, youth, they always want to be like grownups or even older youth. So they're going to love the fact that they're able to be independent and try it on their own. You don't have to just do traditional garden. You can explore other types as well. So a great option is square foot gardening. It's going to be a great way to maximize the space you have. Youth are going to learn the overall concept of the space required by plants and how many plants you can fit into one square foot. And so the first little tidbit, I guess, of a story I want to share is this was one of my Junior Master Gardening programs that I had a couple of years ago. I garden with a group of kids out in Wing North Dakota. And as you can see, we did have an in-ground garden, but we also utilized the concept of square foot gardening. So again, you can create that not only with raised beds, but you can put it in the ground as well. Just make sure rather than the pictures I have that those strings are really nice and tight, especially with the North Dakota winds that we have. And another project that you can take it a step further with youth is again, if you want to start seed with them, I definitely with them actually did kind of a project before we actually put the plants in the square foot. You can go and get paper towels, which they're a little bit smaller than one square foot, but they're pretty close. And then we explored the different sizes. So like extra small plants, radish, carrots, onions, you could place easily 16 seeds on there and space them nicely. Smaller plants, which are going to include our beans, spinach and beets. You could do nine medium plants. We're about four, so that would include lettuce, strawberries and turnips. And then your large plants would be one per square foot. And that would be tomato, eggplant and cabbage. Extra large plants are going to require more than one square foot. And that would be like your squash, your melons, those that are definitely going to go out of a square foot. So another popular option out there would be container gardening. And this is going to work well for those who, again, are limited with space. They may be living in an apartment or even like an independent living or some similar setting. It's going to be a great option if the youth are gardening with maybe elderly, so like grandparents or even those who have a physical disability because you can raise it up. Another style to explore as far as a garden would be considering theme garden. So theme gardens is a type of gardening that revolves around one theme, such as an herb garden. Some other popular options would be pizza garden, a salad garden or even flower gardens. And again, using these themed gardens, it's going to explore what plants you need as far as ingredients to create a final project. And it's going to help bridge that gap of field to table. The more involvement that the youth have in the garden, the more engaged and excited that they will be. So make sure to keep them part of the process of even selecting seeds. Some fun ways to keep them engaged and excited would be trying unusual colored vegetables, exploring something you've never grown and simply lend them pick out something they want to try. I know again, a lot of kids are pretty baffled by the magic of growing purple beans and then boiling them and seeing them turn green. After you've selected the seed, you're going to want to go ahead and engage your youth by creating labels or markers that we use. Here again are some options, but there's just so many out there on the Internet, whether you're in a Pinterest or even want to Google. I've tried a lot of different ones with Junior Master Gardeners. We've even used metal spoons. We've used rocks to kind of create. These aren't the rocks we created, but you can create kind of a shape of the plant or even just write the name popsicle sticks work great. Wooden spoons and even I had just to show you guys I had these ordered and these are easily on Amazon. They're just wooden spoons. So you can just write on them and stick them right in the garden. So another engaging option would be creating an insect hotel. These I mean, you can find these online how to create them. They're very simple. As you can see, lots of different materials can be used, whether it's pine cones or little wood pieces. But if you want, you can also buy them for convenience. It's going to be a great way to attract pollinators and teach the youth about insect life cycles. It's even going to help you again. If you're looking at trying to do like insect identification, I know some kids in science classes, they will have a little project on finding insects and identifying them. So it would be a great way to help with that. And then even utilizing these to teach them about specific pollinators, whether it's honeybees, butterflies, any of those and taking a step further to learn what's more going to be most prevalent in North Dakota. And then they're going to be able to see to what these insects maybe need or their babies need to survive the winter. So to kind of round out the gardening aspect and stuff, you're really going to spark your child's curiosity no better than actually seeing that field to table concept. So obviously, you'll have a lot of fresh produce to just let them explore different tastes, even trying to find recipes to cook with. Again, kind of going back to that Junior Master Gardener program that I had in Wing, one of the final, I guess, days that we had the program together is we ended it with a picnic. So after we harvested everything and cleaned out the garden, I sent them home with produce. And I told them that the next time we met, they had to bring different dishes that they use that produce from the garden. And it was really neat to see them bring different recipes and even just different dishes for others to try. But you can also trans transition into preservation methods. Again, teach some of those life skills, maybe even start a family tradition with them. One of our local master gardeners had told me that her son had a real light bulb moment when canning cucumbers for pickles and had never put the two together. So he was astonished by the fact that pickles weren't just pickles, that they were cucumbers done through a means of preservation. It's nice to explore other methods of preservation, whether it is making like a fresh salsa, canning a salsa, or even in this photo, this is a tomato and herb oil. So there's a lot of options out there. And then preservation doesn't have to be limited to what you grow in the garden. But also maybe some different fruits that are available in the grocery store that we can't grow here in North Dakota. Of course, you can use apples or house gaps like Kathy had mentioned in the last one. And there's other fruit but making jams, jellies, serps, even sauces are going to teach them again that life skill. One thing that's really popular these days with other youth is going to be is doing fruit leather. So just seeing a way of drying out fruit and the way that tastes. And again, I had that group that was in wing and I actually had a group that was in Wilton that were junior master gardeners. And one thing, again, we did to kind of end our time together is we did freezer jam. So of course, the kids love just squeezing and smashing all the berries. We did a strawberry one in the baggies and adding that and then being able to take that home and share it with their parents. And we also did an herb butter as well where we use fresh herbs, heavy whipping cream and just made some herb butter. And they all just really were so proud of the fact that they had made it and were able to share it with their families. So by utilizing different preservation methods, the fresh eating and cooking. Again, more youth will be able to incorporate more fruits and vegetables into their diet and they're going to get out there and they're going to be able to actually engage and be more physically active. So with that, I'm just going to keep us on time tonight. Here's my photo credit. And I again, just thank you guys for joining us tonight. And I will entertain any questions that we may have. Hey, thanks, Kelsey. OK, we're open for questions. Does anybody have any questions? I have one. What would be your favorite vegetable to grow with kids with a young kid? With a young one, five years old. I enjoy doing the unusual colors. So like the purple carrots, the white carrots and stuff, they they always seem to think that it's going to taste different than your typical carrot. Yeah, but don't purple carrots taste terrible? I don't think so. Do you? Yes, they're kind of bitter. But I don't think they do. I I recommend beans. They're almost foolproof and they're quick and. They just I that got me in a horticulture. I had the bean row in my family's garden and I always had a sure crop. And my mom always used to use to pick a bucket of beans for dinner. Mom, give me a kiss and life was good. They like the carrots because then we can share them with the horses, any leftovers. OK, or how about a dig treasure pirates like a potato pirates? That's a fun one. Yes, what's the worst vegetable to grow with kids? The worst one. Well, for me, it'd be tomatoes, but I just don't like tomatoes. And they're they're a little more higher maintenance, in my opinion. I'd say habanero peppers would be the worst ones. As soon as they touch them, they'll be screaming in pain. How about those purple beans? Can you talk about those purple beans? What's that about? As far as being what's a purple bean? Just like a green bean, except it's purple in color. And then when you cook them, they turn green, huh? Yeah. So like I said, kids enjoy that magical moment of that color disappearing. How about cherry tomatoes? We got a comment. They say cherry tomatoes is a good one, too, for kids. I think you again would agree with that. You're very. Oh, yeah, you hate tomatoes. Sorry, I'm not a tomato person. Anybody else have any ideas or about favorite vegetables or? You know, I know you always come down on zucchini, but I enjoy it because guess what? You can do so many things, whether it's savory or sweet recipes. It's great. I know you always joke that people can't give it away, but. I respect zucchini. I best thing about zucchini for kids is when they get too big, you can carve them and make a boat out of them. You carve them and they float. You can put a mast on them and you can have recreation with them. Besides, and that's about all they're good for when they're old. When the kidneys are old, you can play with them. Pumpkins are a joy. How about that? We got so many like pumpkins. Pumpkins are great because this is something I learned in the last couple of years and again, some community gardeners and master gardeners had explained this to me. But with youth, you can actually scribe pumpkin. So as they're growing, if you scratch in them like either a shape or your name, as they grow out, that's going to scar over. And then when you get a large pumpkin, you're going to see that really nice and clear on them. So again, kind of a fun activity to do with your kids. Okay, this mother likes to grow peas with their kids because the kids like to open them up just like with a zipper. You know, just show them it's kind of fun. Then you eat them. Got to eat them in the garden, right? That's right. The problem with peas is that they ripen on the 4th of July and then you can't go to the fireworks. You spend the whole day showing peas. I hate peas for that. What do you do about teaching kids about controlling insects? As far as, you know, when I've worked with youth and stuff on that, we do a lot more of identification and then talking about even just like some natural predators. So discussing, you know, not all bugs are bad. You don't have to freak out when you see them on the ground and really identifying those that are going to be able to eat other bugs within your garden. I mean, of course, if you're working with an adult audience, you can talk more about maybe some of the chemical approaches. But with youth, I don't ever, we don't we don't ever explore really into the pesticide aspect. We just do more identifying natural ones and talking about ways that we can protect our produce. I agree with that. That's kids like like to spray bugs, though, but it's just not safe. How and what else? How about you ever grown gourds and you can paint them like those swan gourds? That's kind of cool. Up for the birdhouse gourds. Papa's pumpkin patch always offers those. This person paints tires to be container gardens and you slash from old mini blinds for road markers. Oh, that's a good idea. Yeah, there you go. Kids who can find the biggest worm, that's a fun one. Who can go digging for worms? You can find the biggest weed, big pumpkins. These are all great ideas. Tom, and what do you always recommend for large pumpkins for kids? I know you got some specific varieties. Maybe you want to share. Oh, I think the best. I think the. Well, I like big ones. Kids like the kids like big ones. So big moves is the best one because I mean, you can just grow a giant pumpkin like the Atlantic giants, but those are tan and lopsided and they're ugly and they get too big. You can't get them out of the garden. You need a tractor to get them out of the garden. So I like the big moves. You just you plant them and then they get 50 pounds and the kids can just roll them. And it's it's kind of all over them. Yeah, that's good. Does anybody else have any comments or questions? Any favorite recipes, Kelsey, that could trick kids to try different vegetables? Good idea. Yeah. As far as vegetables, you know, I'll say myself, I personally, too, again, going back to the zucchini, I've NDSU provides a really good idea for recipes on there and stuff. So I always look at zucchini, like, you know, can we do what are the sweet and savory ones I know with some of the four H's here in Burley County, one that's been really popular is like a blueberry lemon zucchini cake. And it is fantastic tasting. It's got cream cheese on it. So it's going to be, in my opinion, a crowd pleaser every time. OK, somebody mentioned Zoodles. I don't know where the Zoodle is. Well, that'd be just I I've never done them myself. But yeah, you can get the veggie spirals and then create Zoodles, which are zucchini noodles, and it's an easier way to have, you know, low carb, a little bit healthier eating within. And people use them in spaghetti. And I know you talked about like the zucchini carven it out for a boat. But people have done even I have a friend that does zucchini boats. And she does like she'll do like spaghetti meat on top and she's or even taco meat and kind of create them that way. OK, that sounds good. OK, those are all good comments. And Chelsea, I want to thank you for. That fun talk at the end. I really enjoyed it. Brought a lot of good memories with my kids to mind. And I really enjoyed your talk. A lot of photos. Great information. Thank you very much.