1) We grew a garden in a small swimming pool. It worked well and turned out really cute!  2)                    ///////////////KINDER GARDEN NEWS/////////////////   ========A FREE ON-LINE NEWSLETTER FROM GARDENS FOR GROWING PEOPLE========== Fall 1997 Welcome to the Fall issue of Kinder Garden News, a free e-mail newsletter from Gardens for Growing People. Kinder Garden News is delivered four times a year to your e-mail box. If you are receiving this newsletter you have either requested it or previously contacted us via e-mail. If you know others who would like to subscribe to Kinder Garden News, have them email us at  GrowPepl@nbn.com with their e-mail address and the word "subscribe" in the text. To unsubscribe from this newsletter reply with the word "unsubscribe" in the text. IN THIS ISSUE: ============= Harvest Crafts Nutrition Gardening Wild Harvest                          Autumn Activities                          """"""""""""""""" Fall is my favorite time of year. Not many people claim orange as their favorite color as I do (I'm not sure what that says about my personality), but autumn is full of orange.  It is the color of ripe pumpkins, autumn leaves, Mexican sunflowers, school buses and number 2 pencils.  The harvest of this year's growing season graces our table as we cook and can our favorite applesauce, pickles, tomato jam and zucchini relish.  Little corn husk dolls and ears of ornamental corn occupy the table centerpiece. Outside the garden is humming with fall activity. This is the time for getting those composting piles going with heaps of spent garden plants and buckets of kitchen scraps.  As garden beds are cleared, they are planted again with carrots, beets, lettuce, celery, kolhrabi, kale and onions. Bulbs for spring crocus, daffodils, and hyacinths are also tucked into the ground.  Cover crops of fava beans, field peas and clover are sown anywhere and everywhere.  Children are great random dispersers of cover crop seed. I give my children handfuls of fava beans and tell them to plant them anywhere they like.  We get fava beans coming up in all sorts of surprising places! This issue focuses on autumn harvest crafts, and the link between soil, nutrition and healthy eating habits.  I hope you enjoy it! Harvest Crafts ============== In adult gardens, grown ups tend to prune off spent flowers to keep the garden looking tidy. If you do this in a child's garden the children will miss out on all the fascinating seed pods that follow the flowers.  Seeds come in all shapes, sizes and colors.  A good seed craft project for young children is to glue seeds onto a small sheet of cardboard in any pattern or design they desire. For an interesting variation try cutting the cardboard into shapes like a heart or gingerbread man.  Have children gather any seeds they find and glue them onto the cardboard shapes.  Some good seeds are sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds, scarlet runner beans, lunaria seed pods and ornamental corn. Love-in-a-puff is a cute little black seed with a white heart on it! For older children, try having them string various seeds together to make a necklace.  Good seeds for stringing are pumpkin seeds, ornamental corn, scarlet runner beans, Christmas pole lima beans, and acorns.  Job's Tears are the most amazing seeds; I call them garden pearls because they are the size and shape of pearls, silvery, white or maroon, and they have a natural hole for stringing! For other seeds lacking a natural hole, soak the seeds in warm water for about an hour until they are soft enough to push a needle through.  Thread dental floss on a needle and begin stringing. Seeds and beads make interesting combinations. ***** Nutrition Gardening =================== When we grow peas, not a single one ever makes it to the kitchen table. They all get raided by little hands and eaten fresh off the vine.  But if I serve store bought, canned or frozen peas, forget it.  I recently heard about a canned foods company in England that was attempting to market chocolate flavored vegetables in order to get children to eat more vegetables! In this day and age when a majority of children have an appalling lack of vegetables in their diet, I can understand their motivation, although a bit misguided.  Canned peas will never taste as good as fresh organic peas no matter how much salt, sugar or chocolate flavoring is added.  Most children love to taste things they have grown themselves and eating garden grown vegetables is a great way for young children to develop an appreciation for good food and healthy eating habits. Did you know that vegetables that taste good usually contain more nutritional value?  Not all tomatoes have the same nutritional value. Quality of seed is a vital factor.  Most commercially grown tomatoes are grown not for their flavor or nutritional value, but rather they are grown for how well the produce can be trucked across the country.  There are old fashioned heirloom varieties of tomato that have more flavor and nutritional value, yet are so juicy you can hardly get them to the kitchen table, let alone be trucked across the country. Quality soil is even more imperative to good produce. Agricultural practices which deplete soils of minerals yield vegetables that are minerally and nutritionally deficient, which in turn lead to weakened immune systems and so on.  These agriculture practices utilize chemical fertilizers which produce good short term results, but which over time do nothing to improve the structure of the soil.  Organic matter is not returned to the soil and before long the soil in agricultural lands becomes depleted.  By improving the nutritional quality of our soils through composting and adding organic matter, we can grow nutritionally superior vegetables that taste great! Access to fresh, tasty garden vegetables is the key to nurturing an appreciation for healthy foods.  Some families do not have a kitchen garden, nor can they afford the high cost of organic produce.  In this regard, a school garden with an emphasis on nutritional gardening can play a vital role in the lives the children the school services. Two books we highly recommend if you are considering a children's nutritional garden are: "The Children's Kitchen Garden" by Georgeanne and Ethel Brennan, and "Fanny at Chez Pannise" by Alice Waters.  Both of these books are available from us, of course. "Fanny at Chez Panisse" is a collection of stories told from the viewpoint of a young girl whose mother runs a restaurant that serves organically grown produce.  The stories send messages about where good food really comes from - not the supermarket, but from farms and people who care about the earth.  This is a good read aloud book for ages eight and older. "The Children's Kitchen Garden" is a recently published book that chronicles the way one elementary school integrated gardening, cooking, and learning, to teach children to appreciate healthful food and their relationship to the earth.  This book contains a wealth of information on how to start a children's kitchen garden, how to work with children in a garden, as well as basic gardening information.  Both books feature plenty of recipes. Interested?  The Children's Kitchen Garden retails for $16.95 and Fanny at Chez Panisse sells for $24.00 (hardcover)  You can order by phone (415) 663-9433 or mail in your order to Gardens for Growing People, PO Box 630, Point Reyes, CA 94956.  Mention that you are a newsletter subscriber and we will pay all sales tax and shipping charges for you. Plants for a nutritional snack food garden: ------------------------------------------ What an admirable and ambitious goal to grow a garden of healthy snack foods!  Below is a list of good candidates for such a garden.  Most of these can be nibbled fresh off the plant. Snap peas - Grow the peas with the edible pod for best snacking. Cherry tomatoes - Small tomatoes that are just the right size for little hands.  Orange or yellow varieties are good for small children who have a hard time waiting until tomatoes turn red. Carrots - Sweet treasures hidden underground. Cucumbers - Lemon cucumbers can be eaten like an apple fresh from the garden. Sunflowers (seeds) - Grow enough to share with the birds. Soybeans - These are good raw or lightly steamed. Green beans - Another food that kids will gobble up in the garden, but won't touch them on the dinner plate. Raspberries - Everbearing raspberries will pump out sweet snacks all season long. Strawberries - Strawberries are a must for kids to munch on in a child's garden. Lettuce - A mild leaf to eat alone or with other greens. Popcorn - It is possible that popcorn was the first type of corn ever grown for food.  Ears of popcorn have been found that were more than 5,600 years old! Mini zucchini - These are best when eaten small, about 4 or 5 inches. ***** Wild Harvests ============= Your garden isn't the only place brimming with harvest at this time of year; take a look at the wild lands around you.  You and your children will enjoy going for a walk and gathering acorns and rosehips to return home and make acorn pancakes served with rosehip syrup! Acorn pancakes -------------- While all acorns are edible, they need to be boiled in several changes of water to remove their tannin.  White oak acorns are the sweetest and need the least amount of boiling to rid them of tannin.  To make acorn pancakes you will first need to make acorn flour.  Gather 3 or 4 cups of acorns and boil them in water for a few minutes.  Let them cool and them remove the outer shells. Boil them again in several changes of water until the water comes clear. Roast the acorns in a 200oF oven until they become brittle. Put the brittle acorns through a coffee grinder to make acorn flour.  To make pancakes mix 1/3 cup flour with 1 cup of acorn flour, 2 teaspoons of baking powder, and 3/4 teaspoon salt.  Then add 1 cup milk, 1 egg and 3 tablespoons of butter. Mix well.  Spoon mixture onto hot frying pan, flip and turn once. Rosehip Syrup ------------- Gather wild rose hips and cut off the sepal ends.  Cover 2 cups of rose hips with water and boil until mushy. Strain off the juice, cover with water again and make a second extraction. For every two cups of resulting juice add 1 cup of sugar, 2 tablespoons of lemon juice and 1 tablespoon of cornstarch dissolved in a little water. Boil until it thickens. Serve over the acorn pancakes! Regards, Ruth & John Lopez GARDEN FOR GROWING PEOPLE (Resources for a Garden Based Education)