A hands-on vegetable garden at the AHA Museum in Lancaster, Ohio, is helping young children dig in, learn, and grow their own food in a fun and interactive way.
Amelia Walters, a fifth-grade 4-H member of the Clear Creek Showmen club, is leading efforts to plant and maintain vegetables in the museum’s garden space while teaching children how vegetables grow and how to care for them. Through hands-on activities, kids will learn where food comes from and how gardens grow.
Throughout the summer, there will be weekly garden sessions at the hands-on vegetable garden at the AHA Museum in Lancaster, Ohio.
This year, the garden area will officially kick off from 10 a.m. to noon May 30 Families are invited to attend AHA’s! “CELEBRATE! SUMMER!” event. Children will be able to plant vegetables, explore gardening, and enjoy the museum’s indoor play space (admission is $8, 1 year old and under free).
Throughout the summer, Amelia and local master gardeners, Stephanie Tingler and Keith Eichhorn, will be hosting weekly garden sessions every Friday from 10 a.m. to noon starting June 5, where she will teach children about gardening in a fun, engaging, and interactive way.
Logo designed by Amelia Walters for the Little Hands Big Harvest project
This project is made possible thanks to generous community support, including plant and seed donations from the Fairfield County Master Gardeners, Falers Feed Store, materials from Lowe’s, and support from Tractor Supply. The AHA! Museum, and the most important part of this project is you – the families and children in our community who come to AHA! For this fun experience of getting your hands dirty,and helping the garden grow.
Throughout the summer, there will be weekly garden sessions at the hands-on vegetable garden at the AHA Museum in Lancaster, Ohio.
About the Project
The Little Hands, Big Harvest: Hands To Larger Service Garden, is a youth-led 4-H community service project focused on hands-on learning, to teach young kids about gardening. The project enhances the existing garden space at AHA! by planting vegetables and creating hands-on opportunities for children.
About AHA! Museum
AHA! A Hands-On Adventure children’s Museum located at 1708 River Valley Circle Lancaster, Ohio 43130, is a hands-on children’s museum offering interactive exhibits and play-based learning experiences for young children and families in the community.Source: Amelia Walters – Fairfield County 4-H Member
Gardening Near Black Walnuts
An often unrealized but common struggle for gardeners in Ohio is attempting to garden in an area where black walnut trees are nearby.
Black walnut (Juglans nigra) is a native, hardwood tree, common throughout Ohio, mostly occurring in bottomlands and open fields. It is highly desired and valuable for timber, which is often used to construct furniture, trim, gunstocks, and veneer. The nuts it produces are also rich, oily, and highly nutritious. Because they are delicious, squirrels readily gather the nuts and bury them for storage, resulting in new black walnut seedlings planted by squirrels.
Black walnuts may grow as tall as 70 feet tall and 70 feet wide, if growing on open ground in full sun! Although they prefer deep, moist, yet well-drained soils with high fertility- especially near waterways, they also tolerate dry, shallow, and poor soils too.
Sounds great, right? So, what’s the problem?
Well, for plants that aren’t black walnut, the problem is that the tree produces a compound called “juglone” which is a substance the tree produces in the roots and utilizes to kill competing plants nearby. Few plants can tolerate exposure to juglone.
The plants that stand the best chances are those that are also native to the spaces where black walnuts thrive. Many hardwood tree species, understory shrubs, and herbaceous flowers can tolerate growing with black walnut, but few vegetable and fruit species can survive to produce good harvests when within the root zone of the tree. The roots aren’t the only concern. Wood shavings, leaves, sticks, hulls, and nuts of the black walnut all contain juglone and can cause plant death if used in compost or mulch.
If you have experienced your garden plants yellowing and wilting with no reasonable explanation, take a step back and look up. Is there a walnut tree growing close by? If the answer is yes, you can choose to move your garden out of its reach, by relocating or installing raised beds, or you plant things that can tolerate exposure to juglone.
Common fruits and vegetables that can tolerate juglone include onions, beets, squash, melons, carrots, parsnips, beans, corn, cherries, plums, peaches, black raspberries, and elderberries. Tomatoes and peppers are extremely sensitive to juglones should not be grown close to black walnut trees.
If you have black walnuts near your garden, it doesn’t mean you are doomed! Call OSU Extension in Fairfield County to help you with alternative options.
Penn State University Extension has a great fact sheet on plants that are tolerant to black walnut that is available to consult at: https://extension.psu.edu/landscaping-and-gardening-around-walnuts-and-other-juglone-producing-plants
Learn more about black walnut trees from the Ohio Department of Natural Resources at: https://ohiodnr.gov/discover-and-learn/plants-trees/broad-leaf-trees/Black-Walnut-Juglans-nigraSource: Christine Gelley, Noble County Extension Educator
Upcoming events
Fairfield County Master Gardener’s Annual Plant Sale: 9 am until sold out May 30. Cash sales only. Location: Fairfield County Fairgrounds-Ed Sands Farm Bureau Building, 157 E Fair Ave, Lancaster.
Join the Fairfield County Master Gardeners for their Annual Plant Sale. Plants will include annuals, perennials, vegetables, and herbs, as well as accessories and more! Cash only. For details, contact OSU Extension in Fairfield County at 740-653-5419
This article originally appeared on Lancaster Eagle-Gazette: AHA! Museum teaches kids to grow food in garden
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