At the direction of our leadership, Extension has been collaborating with several community groups again this year. We have increased the collaboration project with the Floyd County Health Department, local daycare centers, and Extension Master Gardeners. Grant funding through the health department has allowed us to increase from three daycare centers to five this year. The goal of the program is to provide education and nutritious fruits and vegetables to daycare age youth and their parents. Raised beds and container gardens have been established at the local daycare centers. The gardens were planted with strawberries, cherry tomatoes, cucumbers, and various other vegetables. In addition, each of the one hundred fifty-four family units (youth and parents) were provided with containers and plants for home production.

Extension and Extension Master Gardeners took the lead on providing the educational component of the program by providing training to the daycare workers, parents, and hands-on activities with the youth. Those sessions included the topics of basics of gardening, raised bed/container gardening, harvesting and food safety. Since most of the participants are beginning gardeners, they were provided with educational materials to use as references and a harvest chart. The youth are being instructed on what is edible, where our food comes from, hand and food cleaning, and basic plant care.

During the first year for the project, we were surprised and pleased with the number of participating family units interested and active in the project. All the adult participants advised that they learned new knowledge from involvement in the program. Ninety-seven percent of the participants reports using new skills learned from one of the session. Most of the participants have thanked the entities for their efforts in making their gardening efforts successful and getting their kids interested in gardening. With the increase in number of sites, we hope to see increased involvement from the parents and youth.