Children growing plants for next fair
Mary Harrington and Commissioner Carolann Swartz watch as a person signs her daughter up for Growums.
MOSES LAKE - Mary Harrington stood behind piles of jars decorated with cartoon characters of vegetables.
The paper containers, marked with names like taco garden and pizza garden, are part of a project to get children between six and nine years old growing vegetables and spices.
"We're hoping that in the fall, they'll bring them back, either decorated or whatever they want and enter them in the fall fair," Harrington said. "They'll have a Growums section for them to enter them in, so they can get a ribbon."
The packages included seeds, fertilizer and stakes to mark where the plants are, Harrington said. The vegetables and spices vary depending on which package the child selects. For example, the pizza garden contains Roma tomato, basil, oregano and bell pepper seeds.
"There's four little pots in here and they put the seed in here and (the directions) tell them exactly how to do it and then they go online and there are games and directions and follow- through," she said.
The program is designed to teach children they can grow their own food and to give them gardening knowledge, according to the Growums website.
"When I was a kid, I started growing vegetables for my dad's garden center using the same type of pellets used to grow your Growums today," Growums founder Michael Ferraro wrote. "It was magical to watch this small, dry object soak up water and create a place for me to put my vegetable seeds - and a few days later, I had plants ... Most kids today don't get to experience this, and it's our goal to give them that chance."
The idea came when Fair Advisory Committee Member Lucinda West went to the national fair convention this year, Harrington said.
"They had them there and told her about them and she thought it would be great for us to do at the spring fair and then we could follow through with the fall fair," she said.
Harrington said a lot of the containers were picked up by children and their parents early during the fair. The most popular was the pizza garden, followed by the salad garden.
Where the children picked up the kits, a poster shows the vegetables and spices in each package. The vegetables are drawn as cartoon characters with names such as Belle Peppa and Duke the Cuke.
"The characters make it fun for the kids," Harrington said. "So it's kind of a clever idea ... The kids are really excited about it."
Most of the children picking up the Growums packages have said they plan to bring the vegetables back for the Grant County Fair in August.
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