Gleaner's Food Bank and the Capital City Garden Project teamed up again this year to give local kids a fun gardening experience.

The Children of the Earth Garden at 17th and Alvord sits on a plot donated by Gleaner's Food Bank. It was worked by kids from the Edna Martin Center summer day camp in a program facilitated by CCGP Americorps members Brooke Albright and Shawn Casey.

Before the Program started the CCGP crew got the garden ready by lining up the volunteer tomatoes (yellow pears which produced quite well) and volunteer sunflowers and then mulching in the rest. The kids planted squash, radishes, watermelon, greens and beets. The day camp schedule required us to work the garden during the hottest part of the summer. Luckily this plot is shaded for most of the morning!

Watering was our number one priority most days, but we also picked mulberries, tomatoes and sunflowers.

Brooke, who spent the winter teaching grow lab programs for CCGP, brought some great activities to the garden. This summer we made cardboard seed diagrams, a compost bag and a scarecrow; we even pulled out the cement to make stepping stones that now line a path into the center of the garden from the sidewalk.