Youth Summer Camps in July

All spots have been FILLED for Grow Food, Grow Hope's Junior Master Gardener Camp!

Junior Master Gardener Camp will be July 18-22nd for ages 6-12 and Seed, Seed, Sprout Day camp will be July 6-8th and is meant for ages 3-5. Both camps focus on gardening, nutrition and trying new foods. Participants in both camps will have the chance to take part in "kids in the kitchen" cooking projects and "water" days as part of their camp experiences.

Grow Food, Grow Hope is very excited to facilitate these camps and hopes to make them even better than last year with new activities and experiments. So your child will have new experiences if he or she is attended for the first time or for the second time!

Check out what we did at camp last year!

To register your child for camp please download a registration form for Seed, Seed Sprout here and for Junior Master Gardener here. These forms can be returned to Grow Food, Grow Hope at the Center for Service & Civic Engagement at Wilmington College.

If you have questions about camp please contact our camp coordinator, Jennifer Kerschner at 937-382-6661 ext 596.

Fresh Food Access

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention define a food desert as "areas that lack access to affordable fruits, vegetables, whole grains, low-fat milk, and other foods that make up the full range of a healthy diet."  A food desert exists when people live long distances from a supermarket or large grocery store and do not have easy or affordable access to transportation.  While food deserts are not typically of large concern in rural areas such as Wilmington, where farm stands and local produce are readily available, looking at a map will show you that, while we may not have a food desert, fresh food access is far from abundant in Clinton County.

The above map of Wilmington, OH shows five commercial locations where fresh produce can be purchased: Sack n Save, Old Farm Market, Kroger, Aldi, and Wal-Mart.  A half-mile circle has been shaded green around each location to show the availability of walking to each establishment.  Please notice the number of Wilmington city neighborhoods which are not included in these circles.  

The same map now also includes the Clinton County Farmers' Market with its different winter and summer locations.  While the Farmers' Market does not operate daily like the other establishments, it greatly increases the number of Wilmington residents who can walk to purchase fresh produce throughout the year.  Through a partnership with Grow Food, Grow Hope, the Clinton County Farmers' Market is also introducing an EBT program, which will allow the market to accept food assistance benefits like cash.  This program will begin at their first summer market on June 4th.   Accepting food assistance benefits, formerly known as food stamps, will allow a greater number of low-income patrons to come to the market and purchase fresh, local, and affordable foods.  

Through Grow Food, Grow Hope's continuing efforts to teach people to garden, we hope that this map may soon become obselete so that everyone will have equal access to fresh produce whether it is through a garden or from a local grower or grocer.  

Container Gardening

At Grow Food, Grow Hope we have found ourselves in a container gardening experiment. And it has been a HUGE success!

Our friends at McCarty Gardens were kind enough to donate apprxomately $400 worth of vegetable plugs to Grow Food, Grow Hope to place in our various gardens throughout Clinton County. For those of you who may not know, a vegetable plug is a seedling that is started in a very small cell, approximately 1/2 inch across and 1 inch deep, and when we received them they were ready to be replanted.

Since we did not have a supply of traditional pots, we took whatever we had on hand, some potting soil, and planted in recycled objects. Our supply of plastic cups and empty tin cans soon held tomatoes, peppers, cauliflower, broccoli, and various other vegetables.

Items pulled from the recycling bin have all become refuge to homeless seedlings including deli containers, crystal light packages, two liter soda and Hawaiian punch bottles.

A recycling bin finds new use with a group of seedlings.

Not only did we have a fun time experimenting with container gardening, it has also been highly successful! Several weeks in the containers and as you can see the seedlings are growing despite their seemingly odd habitats and are ready to plant!

So as you can see, when it comes to container gardening the sky is the limit! Plants can truly grow in any container provided they receive enough light, water, and nutrients from the soil in which they are planted. Seedlings can grow in much smaller containers than larger plants so be sure to have larger containers for full grown vegetable plants such as tomatoes and peppers.

Want more advice about container gardening? Contact us with any questions at growfoodgrowhope@gmail.com or by phone at 937-382-6661 ext 321.

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