According to a special National Gardening Association report, Garden to Table: A 5-Year Look at Food Gardening in America, 35% of all households in America are growing food at home or in a community garden.  Over the course of 5 years, this has increased by 17%.  The largest increases are seen among younger households with 2 million more households doing community gardening (which is a 200% increase) over 10 years.  These amazing statistics don’t just magically happen.Without education, no one learns self-sustainability.  Without our youth, we have no future.  So why don’t we educate our youth how to self-sustain in the garden? This is exactly what we have done.

By taking Junior Master Gardeners into the schools, we have had the opportunity to teach our youth the importance of why we grow and what we can grow.  They have learned how to be creative through recycling.  They have learned ideal growing conditions.  They understand the life cycle process of a seed and have gone as far as to learn the nutritional value of natural items like seeds and crickets.  Through the formation of 3 new clubs, the Junior Master Gardeners, at two of our schools, have actively engaged in numerous weeks of education and hands-on experiences.  They have taken on gardening projects at their schools and will be working in their greenhouses over the summer and school year.  New experiences provided, such as these, will teach these youth the satisfaction of growing their own crops and having the know-how of being an independent provider.

As quoted by one student, “I love our group, the Mean Green Growing Machines."  Every week, Miss Nita teaches us new things so that we learn how to grow and take care of our plants.  We have done fun projects and I hope our class gets to do this again next school year.”