The Johnson Youth Center Garden Program may not have taken gold, but at the Harvest Fair I counted 29 ribbons from their entries. In the end they took six class championships and the grand champion award.
For over 10 years, the JYC has developed and refined their garden program. Jo Dahl, the garden teacher, gives credit to the volunteers that help out, especially Sandy and Suzanne Williams, who provided guidance and support for the first seven years.
From January to March, guest speakers come in and discuss different gardening topics. Then as the boys begin the plant starts under the grow lights, volunteers arrive once a week. Currently, four members of the Juneau Garden Club go out once a week to coach the boys. Patricia Wherry talked about the attachment the boys have to the plants. She said they anguish over root maggot damage and observe what heat exhaustion does to the greenhouse plants.
According to Dahl, gardening has many lessons, the first being patience. “You have to wait for that hot pepper to grow.” The boys also learn to cooperate with each other. Some tasks require multiple people, so learning how to work with peers, to both contribute and coordinate actions, is necessary. It takes teamwork to cover a 3-foot by 20-foot bed with plastic.
They also find out more about what they like and don’t like. There are boys who like to do the heavy lifting, digging up the soil at the beginning of the season. Then there are those who prefer to plant the seeds. All of which contribute to life lessons in knowing that sometimes you have to get through the things you don’t like in order to get to the good stuff.
Finally, the boys learn that everything is experiential. Everything provides an opportunity to learn. This year the amount of entries JYC submitted was down from their usual 30. Some of the missing entries were from the greenhouses. The boys were told to add fertilizer to the plants once a month. However, like most of us when we start out, they had the misconception that if once a month is good, more is better.
At the fair, the boys shared what they had learned. “We put too much fertilizer on our tomatoes. They’re pretty big, but they don’t have many tomatoes.”
In the end, the boys learn a hobby that might help them avoid trouble and maintain their sobriety. When I asked them if they thought they would continue to garden, one of the boys said that he hoped he would. “My mom would really like me to.”
It’s evident the boys developed a sense of pride in what they accomplished. I imagine there were quite a few of them waiting to hear about the results and happy faces when they finally got to see what had won. No podium, but a multitude of colors when the ribbons were sorted and a general sense that they would have won a gold medal.
• Corinne Conlon is a freelance writer based out of Juneau. She can be reached at dirtgirlgardening@gmail.com.
A prize winning head of cabbage.
