'Grow Anywhere Tour' - Helping Iowa Eat Healthy
Burpee Edible Gardening Team Members
After our rainy Saturday in Kansas City, we decided to head North into the sunshine. The Grow Anywhere Tour hit the road and made its way to Des Moines on Monday. It was a great drive and we saw vast expanses of farmland through Missouri and Iowa. It looks like the Midwest is ready to grow! We made it to Des Moines in good time and had a chance to do some sightseeing. We even passed John Wayne’s birthplace on the way up! After getting our fill of excitement we retreated back to the hotel to rest up for our next events.
As Tuesday dawned we got ready to visit Earl May Garden Center on Douglas Ave. We met up with Jerry Holub, who was very excited to see us. He was thrilled to hear all about what Burpee Home Gardens is doing and wanted to help promote the Grow Anywhere Tour in any way he could. We talked to many of Jerry’s customers about the tour and about some of our fantastic vegetable plants.
On Wednesday, we woke up at dawn and headed to the Urbandale Hy-Vee store. There we met up with Jerry Kluver and handed out some gardening knowledge. We also picked up 500 Burpee Home Gardens vegetable plants. From there we headed out to Loffredo Fresh Produce to pick up the 1300 lbs of produce that we would be handing out at our event later in the day. This is also when the temperature went from about 60 degrees to nearly 40 degrees! What a cold snap! But everyone we met took it in stride saying, “That’s Iowa.”
With the plants and produce on board we headed to Moulton Learning Center and were met by some awesome volunteers who helped us bag the vegetables and setup our plants in record time thanks to teacher Susan Rushing and her team. We hear the school recently received a grant to build and maintain their school garden. Congrats! The 50 veggie plants from Burpee will have a special home this season.
Folks from the Food Corps were also at Mouton getting the new school garden prepped for planting. Garden educators also set up a demonstration about how to plant vegetables in containers. Some kids grabbed plants and immediately went and planted them in their very own containers. (They also had a lot of fun digging in the dirt!)
Even with the sudden drop in temperature, we had a tremendous turnout and left with only empty boxes! At the end of the day everyone left happy with something to eat and something to plant.
Next Stop Minneapolis: Beep Beep!
Follow the truck as it travels the country this spring! Real-time updates on Twitter @BurpeeHG, #BurpeeTruck, #GrowAnywhereTour.