Youth Garden

You have twenty seconds to brainstorm three ideas for how to use your super brown bananas that are starting to attract fruit flies: GO!

   (20 seconds later)

 Here’s my list (I really timed it, and honestly, whether you believe me or not, I did ask myself that question pretty spontaneously. Originally I was going to use a different fruit, but then my brain did a last-minute switch-up, which probably evened up the playing field between us a little).

1.  banana bread
2.  banana ice cream
3.  compost
4. vermicompost!
5.  teeth whitening
6.  shine your shoes

I get to witness the growth of a kale plant from seed to plate approximately 60 times each growing season in the Brainfood Youth Garden. And when you consider the hundreds of plants that I watch grow through a full life cycle each year, it would make sense to assume that germination/flowering/fruiting/death/compost is just the day-to-day work schedule. And it is. 
 

But dang! Even as an expected part of my everyday work life, I can’t help but marvel at the tiny leaves still clinging to their split seed as they grow towards the sun. Or the three-foot beast of a kale stem that I throw into my compost bin at the end of summer. It kind of looks like its covered in dragon skin, the scales of which are actually scars where the plant healed itself after each leaf I harvested.
 

The garden boasts exciting new harvests after months of spring greens, kale and carrots. Strawberries are ripening, raspberries are reddening, and snap peas are practically popping off the vines even as their plants continue to climb the trellis towards the sun. 

But beware, we gardeners are not the only ones excited about the flourishing abundance! Constant vigilance is the surest way to ensure those pesky pests don’t eat all our hard work. Consider including the following tasks in your garden routine if you don’t already have a defense strategy employed:

What do you get when you combine 5 eggplants, 10 lbs of pole beans, a gallon of blanched sweet potato greens, and dozens of Thai basil bunches? We asked ourselves that very question earlier this month, as a mild panic set in: Our after-school cooking programs hadn’t started back up for the year, and we were filling our fridges and freezers to the gills with fresh produce from the Brainfood Youth Garden. What were we going to do with all those extra veggies?! Thanks to the folks at Neighborhood Farm Initiative, City Blossoms, and Common Good City Farm, we found the answer last weekend: Homegrown DC, a “hyper-local” farmers market where community gardens, urban farms, and youth gardens like ours can show off what they’ve grown and celebrate delicious foods originating right here in the District.

School’s almost out, which means the Brainfood kitchens have been unusually quiet for the past couple of weeks. Our program participants are out finishing up another year of high school, and our ovens and stoves, pots and pans (not to mention instructors) are taking a break from daily cooking to focus on upcoming summer programs.

But outside in the Brainfood Youth Garden, things are in full swing! We’re harvesting a bounty of fresh produce that our programs will use in recipes this summer.  In this blog post, we’re bringing you an exclusive sneak preview of a few of our favorite home-grown Brainfood edibles along with some fun facts about each. 

Brainfood, it seems, always starts and ends with circles.  On the first day of class, new Brainfood students take turns sharing their name, school, and favorite food, and after a full year of cooking and learning in our kitchens, we ask them to circle up for one final round of reflecting on what they’ll miss most about program.  Our weekly classroom assistants, too, first join us at orientation and circle up to hear more about what we do and what it means to be a part of the Brainfood community.  It was only fitting that last night, we honored our amazing classroom assistants with one last appreciation circle in the Youth Garden -- our way of thanking them for helping our classrooms and kitchens run each day.