Gardening with KinPark Kids

Every Summer, the market garden at Kinpark Youth Urban Farm fills to overflowing with vegetables, fruits, and children! Kids Camp participants between the ages of 6 - 10 get their hands dirty each day, helping with garden tasks such as harvesting, weeding, watering and planting.Farm staff have a blast planning and brainstorming fun agriculturethemed activities for the kids. It’s always a delight to see the lightswitch turn on when a child realizes where their food comes from, when they exclaim, “Wait, you mean carrots grow under the ground?!” One of the most successful repeat activities at KinPark Kids Camp is focused on

chick peas. You know, garbanzo beans? They grow easily in the dry Cowichan summer, as it is similar to the Mediterranean climate where chick peas originate. The seeds are large, and easy for little hands to sow. They grow well even if rows are wiggly, or the spacing between plants is uneven. The plants are legumes, which means they can fix GARDENING WITH nitrogen from the KINPARK KIDS - Growing atmosphere into the soil. So, we grow Chick Peas for the soil, the them at KinPark seed, and the satisfaction as a cover crop, or green mulch, which is ‘chopped and dropped’ into pathways or around other crops after dried peas are harvested for seed. That’s the best part - saving chick pea seed is super fun and easy for kids of all ages! To harvest the seeds, wait until the plants start turning yellow and brown, and you can hear peas rattling in their pods. Then, either pull or cut the plants at their base, and, working over a large tote or a tarp, run pinched fingers along the length of the stem to strip off all the pods (lots of leaves will come off too). Once you have a big pile of pods, then it’s time to thresh! Jump and stomp on top of the pile to pop each and every chick pea pod. This can take a while, so for fun, KinPark Kids campers enjoy dance competitions while threshing. “The Twist” is a particularly effective move.

Once all the pods have been popped and the peas are loose, the next step is to separate seeds from leaves and empty pods, also known as winnowing. The best time to winnow is on a windy afternoon, after kids have eaten lunch and are ready to chill out. Dump everything into a big tote, then dump that into another tote or large bucket from up high. The wind carries all the light bits away, leaving only heavier peas behind. Keep dumping from one bucket to the other, being careful no one is standing downwind of the operation, otherwise they will get a face full of dusty chick pea chaff! Little ones may want to stand on a chair in order to have a turn winnowing.

Scoop cleaned seeds into mason jars for dry storage. Or, you can cook them up straight away, and blend with tahini, lemon juice, garlic and salt for a mind-blowing homemade hummus! Wait, you mean hummus comes from a plant!?

Laura Boyd-Clowes Manager, KinPark Youth Urban Farm

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