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Health & Fitness

Gardening with Your Children

Few activities are more rewarding than gardening with your children. Neither of my children had an interest in perusing my passion until a few years ago.

Gardening with your children.  Doesn’t just the thought of it conjure up warm, fuzzy memories for parents and children alike?  The decision over what vegetables to grow leads to much discussion.  Kids don’t eat many vegetables, but most of them enjoy watching tomatoes ripen, seeing the mind-blowing way that zucchini grows, the joy of planting a pack of sunflowers and being amazed by the huge, yellow flowers that produce seeds for the birds.  Yes, so many memories to be had in the vegetable garden for kids and their parents.

My daughter and son have never really had any interest in gardening and even less interest in helping out in the garden.  My Mason Ridge volunteer days found me in the greenhouse, the outdoor classroom, the vegetable garden and co-chair of the grounds beautification department with my friend, Bruce.  Bruce and I even lanscaped the front of the school for the 50th anniversary celebration. None of that impressed Kiki or Alex.  

The reason my son became interested in gardening was a 4-letter word.  B-E-E-R.  Alex, now 24 years old, never had an interest way back in his Mason Ridge days, but he REALLY became interested in making his own beer.  He began small and learned quickly.  His friends became interested and got the bug as well.  It was kind of like an obsession.

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Many days and weeks were spent researching and networking on ways to produce great microbrew beers.  A great resource is a wine & beer shop in Lamp & Lantern Center called St. Louis Wine and Beermaking.  As Alex became more experienced, he purchased numerous vessels for fermenting beer.  The beer has to be cooked (brewed) for a long period of time and then cooled down. He even made a burner for the beer that used the propane tank from my BBQ grill.  On more than one occasion, when planning to grill dinner, I couldn’t because beer had been brewed the previous weekend.  The overuse drained the propane tank dry.  Note to self: purchase many propane tanks and make sure they are always full! 

This interesting hobby provided hours and hours of fun times with Alex and his cohorts, gathered in our driveway, discussing beer making, watching beer being brewed, watching beer being cooled and eventually bottled. Cigars and pizza were consumed, as well as beer, during these cookouts.  In addition to the beer Alex bottles, we are lucky to be the proud owners of not ONE, but TWO kegerators in our storage closet!  Yes, the closet used to be for storage, but microbrew on tap is so much better!

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By now, you’re wondering where the gardening association comes into play.  HOPS.  My son and I grow hops. 

Much deliberation and investigation revolved around the correct hops to purchase for our area.  We figured that Cascade and Galena were the best choice.  The hops were somewhat expensive, considering what we got.  They looked kind of like bearded iris rhizomes.  I did a little homework and asked Steve Cline what he knew about growing hops.  Steve planted a garden a few years ago at the Kemper Center for Home Gardening (www.MoBot.org) called “Take Me out to the Ballgame.”  The very cute “theme garden” consisted of three crops.  Corn- used for popcorn, peanuts- used for salted, roasted peanuts, and hops-used for beer. Steve had one sentence of advice regarding growing hops.  “Whatever you do- DON’T plant them in the ground!”  Apparently there are few plants as invasive as hops.  Unfortunately, I know lots about invasive plants, but that’s another story.

So, Alex and I did some shopping, purchasing 2 large plastic containers, potting soil and plastic-covered metal stakes for trellising the hops.  We had no idea how fast these hops would grow.  By July, I had to purchase pots double the size of the ones we bought in early May.  With water, fertilizer and dumb luck we produced a bumper crop of hops.  They look just like the hops on the AB commercial: mini-morsels of heavenly beer goodness.  Unfortunately, hops have to be roasted before they can be brewed.  After a long day of roasting in the food dehydrator, our house smelled like Pestalozzi Street. No joke-the aroma was strong!

Finally, the momentous day arrived.  With much fanfare, the hops were added to the microbrew kettle.  They were lovingly stirred and incorporated.  Again, all I could think of was Pestalozzi Street.  But the smell was sweet.  My 24 year old finally has an interest in gardening with me.  I just never thought hops would be the fruit of our labor!

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