BEVERLY — Anyone who thinks children don't like vegetables never met the kids in the Beverly Bootstraps after-school program.
They each picked some of their favorites to grow in containers next to the Bootstraps building on Cabot Street. With the help of community gardener Sheila Oulette, they planted spinach and snow peas, radishes and carrots, lettuce and cucumbers.
They're some of the cold-weather crops that can be planted in April.
"I put in all the same vegetables we're planting here, about a week ago," Oulette said. For the last eight years, she's had a community plot in the Bootstraps garden on Cole Street.
"I have broccoli over there, too, but the kids didn't want to grow that here," she said.
Oulette, along with Bootstraps outreach coordinator Julie Murphy, started the kids program as a way to get them interested in nutrition and to help them understand where their food comes from.
"In the store, you only get to see what it looks like full-grown," said Gillian Bingham, 8.
Oulette said she chose a container garden for Bootstraps because there wasn't a good spot for a bed, and it's also more sustainable.
"You grow in small spaces," she said. "You don't waste water. You don't waste fertilizer. You don't waste seeds."
It's also something the kids can apply at home, "even if you just have windows that face south in an apartment," she said.
When the vegetables mature, the kids get to take them home. Nahuel Pittamiglio, 8, said he's looking forward to when his carrots are ready to eat.
"I'm excited to see what they look like," he said. And it will be extra suspenseful, since the orange part is underground.
"They're just going to be plants," he said. "They're not harvested yet."
Because the garden is part of a homework help group, Murphy said they incorporated geometry when the kids spaced the seeds in a certain pattern inside a square. And they're planning a math lesson where they calculate the cost of having a garden versus the cost of buying food in the grocery store.
"You don't have to pay for the food (in the garden)," Gillian Bingham said. "Just the seeds."
She chose to grow cucumbers.
"It's my favorite vegetable," she said. "I eat them with ranch dressing."
Staff writer Cate Lecuyer can be reached at clecuyer@salemnews.com.
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