Program grows young green thumbs

LAKE COUNTY — A new Lake County Boys and Girls Club program is helping children learn more about nutrition, as their fingers turn a little greener under the summer sun.

Sue Toppen, director of KIDS GROW!, has been planting flowers and vegetables with the children since April, and said they will plant their seedlings on May 27.

The children go to Toppen’s house every Wednesday, where they not only plant, but learn. Each session holds a new theme as it relates to gardening and health.

The children listen to presentations from master gardeners with nearly every visit. Toppen herself is a master gardener, and shares her knowledge with the students.

“When they learn at that age it sticks,” Toppen said, adding that it is one of her hopes that the children will eat more nutritiously as a result.

The children plant and harvest a variety of vegetables at Toppen’s home in Polson.

“It’s a nice idea to share that space,” she said.

One project the children may begin working on is a melon ladder. Toppen is looking for a few old wooden ladders. The melon vines will attach to the ladder, as melons sit on the steps.

When someone asked Toppen how the melons would know to sit on the ladder she told them.

“I suspect they will have to be trained much like we are training the kids to plant them,” she said.

The children recently planted rocks to use as row markers to be placed around their garden on Polson Hill.

A five-week gardening summer school program also runs in tandem with the boys and girls gardening program.

The sprouting gardeners will enter their matured crops into the county fair this year, and sell them at a farmers market.