Children put their little shovels to work Monday at Playscape during a garden activity with Dirt Friends Garden Group.
Dirt Friends, a nonprofit organization in El Dorado that plants flowers across town to create a colorful city, shared their expertise with kids, in hopes to encourage a new hobby. Once the group gave them the needed materials, they followed up with a short 101 lesson about what it takes to achieve the goal of the project.
“This is called potato pea buckets, and these are old buckets that I have collected over the years,” said MaryBeth Simpson, Dirt Friends member. “So, you put newspaper at the bottom because they’ve got holes in them to keep the soil from going through. They fill it half full of soil, then they lay four potato chunks, and put them cut side down — fill the rest, and then the kids will put pea seeds in there.
Simpson said the soil the children used was miracle grow fertilizer.
“It’s blue magic,” she said. “It’s exciting, when they get home they’ll need to water it, and put it in the sunshine. Within two or maybe three weeks, depending on how hot the weather gets, the potatoes and peas will sprout.”
Simpson said once the vegetables are ready, the kids will be able to dig up their results.
“The potatoes be the size of a golf ball,” she said. “It’s so exciting to see that they grown something they can eat. With the peas, you can wash them, snap them and cook them to eat. With the potatoes, you can chop ’em up and cook them.
“It’s just fun to see them grow food.”
Simpson said this project teaches children the power of patience.
“It doesn’t happen overnight, and you have to keep up with it,” she said.
Simpson said Dirt Friend’s overall goal is to continue to teach the next generations the benefits of growing their own foods.
“If they need to grow it for food or just for the beauty of it, they would know what to do,” she said. “That’s why you start them young. My 11 year old granddaughters, they love it.”
For more information on Dirt Friends and their next activity at Playscape, visit their Facebook page at Dirt Friends Garden Group.
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