A pumpkin the size of a child’s head, a white turban squash, rows of bushy pepper plants, and enough tomatoes for a night’s worth of salsa at a busy restaurant — all burst from the raised beds at the Tri-Town Safety Village.
The simple abundance belies the hours of toil and the weeks of patience required to bring forth this food from seeds. The quiet of the garden, at 1350 Eagle Ridge Drive in Schererville, belies the desire of the Lake County Master Gardeners Association to fill it with children and their parents.
“We felt there was a need to teach children and families about healthy eating,” said Sharon Taylor-Raduchel, of Dyer. Taylor-Raduchel is a master gardener and a member of the Lake County Master Gardener’s Association. She is the project manager for the “Family Gardens for Your Table” offered in conjunction with Safety Village. “We cleared the land, brought in the soil and compost and built the raised beds.”
It took a few years to get the garden going, and the first year’s harvest went to soup kitchens and food pantries. Taylor-Raduchel said whatever isn’t harvested by the families this season also goes to food pantries in St. John and Highland.
Two beds are reserved for the Safety Village.
“We’ve had 14 harvestings so far. All these (crops) are going to the local food banks and helping families in need,” said William Jarvis, executive director of the Safety Village.
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Jarvis is keen on the Family Garden program and said it has been a work in progress from building the beds and adding the soil to promoting the program and getting the children to come out and plant the seeds and weed the garden.
He wants to expand the concept outside Safety Village by setting up community gardens in each of the three Tri-Town communities. He envisions a program in conjunction with the Lake County Master Gardeners Association, the towns and volunteers.
“This would make it possible for people to grow their own vegetables and share a portion of that with the needy people,” Jarvis said.
Inside Safety Village, the Family Garden is open to children and at least one parent or caregiver for a weekly 30-minute lesson followed by time in the garden. The classes are taught by various master gardeners with expertise in areas such as soil, water, weeds, seed science, composting, photosynthesis, insects, pests and healthy eating.
Taylor-Raduchel, Candyce Jones, of Highland, Linda Smith, of Crown Point, and Veronica Williams, of St. John, are among the master gardeners who teach the classes and oversee the raised beds.
“It is all geared to healthy eating and supports what the schools are doing,” said Jones, a retired elementary school teacher. She currently is a Title 1 tutor at Protsman Elementary School in Dyer. “We want parents or grandparents involved. We want people who want to do healthy eating.”
Kim Baker, of Schererville, and her 8-year-old son Brandon enrolled for an eight-week session over the summer. A transplant from Illinois, she has lived in a Schererville for only a year and signed up for the program after seeing it promoted by the Schererville Park District.
Baker still has peppers to harvest and tomatoes on the vine in her raised bed at Safety Village. At $15 for eight weeks of instruction and access to a raised bed, the program “was a steal. I’m surprised more people didn’t take the class. These ladies (the master gardeners) know what they are talking about.”
Most of Baker’s crops were planted from seed. The most difficult part of the process was learning to tell the difference between a weed and a plant as they started to grow.
“That was why it was helpful to have the Master Gardeners there. Every week you would come in and there would be more weeds, but within a week or two, we would see good growth from the seed plants,” Baker said. “Actually, I always wanted to learn how to garden. My mom had a garden and I just never learned how to do it. I’m definitely doing a garden next year. I’m going to do a raised bed. My husband already has it in his mind that he’s going to do this for me.”
The biggest surprise was how much her son learned to love tomatoes.
“My 8-year-old did not like tomatoes. At first I was just trying to teach him a little about cooking,” she said. “But now he’s popping them in his mouth — he will actually ask for tomatoes now.”
The Baker family is among the 36 percent of all food gardening households with children at home. That’s about 15 million households, according to a study published in 2013 by the National Gardening Association. The number increased 25 percent from the 12 million reported in 2008. The report showed 42 million households were growing food at home or in community gardens as of 2013, a 63 percent increase since 2008.
The Family Garden class is not all weeding, watching and waiting. Children are given a family paver brick to decorate and place in their garden plot. They also get large smooth stones to decorate and use as markers to identify the various plants.
Nancy Coltun Webster is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.