One of the great things I have the pleasure of doing in my position is talking to and teaching children about horticulture. I love to get them excited about growing plants, talking about where our food comes from and teaching what makes soil so important.

I had the pleasure a few weeks ago to talk to children at the Dan Windley Environmental Field Days at Goose Creek State Park. This year, along with Beaufort County 4-H Agent Chasady Quinn, we taught about composting and vermicomposting to more than 200 area fifth graders. We talked about how worms can transform food waste into a soil amendment comparable to fertilizer. We can then use this in our gardens to help our vegetables grow. Vermicomposting also prevents food waste from going to a landfill where it decomposes and releases methane, a potent greenhouse gas (not to mention a very smelly greenhouse gas).

In Hyde County, I get to work at the Hyde, Seek, and Discover Camp every year. This is one of the highlights of my summer! I usually teach a class on foraging for food to around 100 kids. One of my favorite plants for foraging is the cattail (Typha latifolia). This plant is compared to nature’s grocery store. You can use the rhizomes when tender to cook like potatoes or you can cook the young seed heads to eat like corn on the cob. When they are old and dry, the seed head can be split to produce a cottony lint that is one of the best fire starters one can find. However, my favorite thing to do with them is to remove the heart of the plant when they are just starting in the spring. I slice it up and put it in a stir-fry with onions, tomatoes, garlic and lambsquarter (Chenopodium album), another weed that emerges in the spring.

This leads the kids to ask lots of questions! One of the questions I got this year was from my own son. He asked, “What got you into plants?” I had to think about it for a minute before I answered — what did get me into plants? Then it came to me!

When I was coming along, one of the smartest people I had ever known was my own grandfather. I called him Pap-pap Willie, though he was named Delano after Franklin Delano Roosevelt. He seemed to know everything, especially when I was really small. He could fix anything, too! I guess that came from growing up after the depression in a small town as coal miner. He told me one time that he did everything from work in the mines to drive a dump truck to pump gas to even running his own saw mill for a time. My grandfather could teach you too. He always had a way of making things seem so simple! But one of the things that most impressed me when I was a kid was how he always knew every tree in the woods. Not only by the leaves but by just the bark in the middle of the winter, he could tell you what tree it was. I always wanted to be able to do that, too!

I actually went to college to become a physical therapist but changed my major after only a month to environmental science. My love of nature and being outdoors made this a very simple decision. I have had many classes and studied trees for many years now, and I still do not believe I can live up to my Pap-pap Willie when it comes to tree identification, although, I’d like to think I’m close. Take time with children every chance you get because you don’t get but so many chances!

One way you can take time to teach children is by becoming a certified Extension Master Gardener Volunteer. Sign-up on our information list at go.ncsu.edu/bocoemginterest to receive updates on the upcoming 2020 class, call the Extension center today to learn more at 252-946-0111 or visit www.beaufort.ces.ncsu.edu.

Gene Fox is the area consumer horticulture agent for North Carolina Cooperative Extension.