Grow a pizza garden

Connecting the land to the food that we eat is one of the reasons that Jo Wurl and Penny Murphy decided to present a class at the Maud Preston Palenske Memorial Library in St. Joseph about growing a pizza garden.

Wurl, who is the children's librarian there, had read several books about pizza and pizza gardens.

"I know Penny," she says about Murphy, who owns Ma's Organics, an organic farm on Benton Center Road. "And I know she's done some programs for adults at the library, so I asked her to do one on growing a pizza garden."

Using the book "Grow Your Own Pizza! Gardening Plants and Recipes for Kids" by Constance Hardesty, which is available at the library, the class, which was for both adults and children, included Wurl reading books about pizzas such as "Rocky Bobocky the Pizza Man" by Emily Ellison and doing a flannel board story on the book "Cheese Pizza."

Then the families began planting seeds in egg cartons filled with soil.

"Everything we put on pizzas we put in their little gardens," says Murphy, "including oregano, basil, onions, tomatoes, sweet peppers and broccoli. We also gave them some chive plants to take home."

Because Ma's is an organic farm, all the seedlings and soil were organic.

"At this point, whether they stay organic depends on how they choose to treat them," says Murphy, noting that she learned about organic farming from her grandmother.

"My grandmother didn't know the word organic from squat, but she knew that the new stuff couldn't be good for you," says Murphy, who started selling produce from her organic farmstead seven years ago. "We had this piece of ground that was just going to waste, so we decided to do something with it. So for three years we planted cover crops and turned them down to build the soil. Then we started growing, and we had a lot, so we decided to see if the garden could pay for itself, and, by golly, the first year it did, with a tiny little profit, and every year it's gotten better with more customers and more people finding find us."

Both Wurl and Murphy think that it's important for children to learn about growing and how fresh grown impacts the flavor of the foods we eat, and that's why designing an edible landscape is so important. It also teaches them how to cook and gives them the joy of bring food from the garden to the kitchen table.

In her book, "Grow Your Own Pizza! Gardening Plants and Recipes for Kids," Constance Hardesty writes that pizza is one of those foods that always taste great.

"This recipe makes 12 pieces, so invite some friends to a pizza party from your own pizza garden," she says. She offers the following recipe, tools and ingredients needed to get going.

Tools needed: vegetable brush, paper towels, paring knife and cutting board, several bowls (cereal bowls are good), scissors, cookie sheet, mixing spoon, can opener, table knife and pot holder.

Ingredients from your garden:

3 small tomatoes or 1 large one

1 clove of garlic

12 basil leaves

(Whatever else you grew: 4 oregano leaves, 1 sprig parsley, 1 sweet red pepper, 2 small onions and as much as you like of other favorites)

From the market:

1 pizza crust (packaged in a roll in the refrigerated section of the market)

8-ounce can tomato sauce

2 cups mozzarella cheese

Wash and dry all the veggies and herbs.

Cut out the button on the top of each tomato. Cut the tomatoes in half from top to bottom, then hold them, cut side down, over the sink and squeeze gently until most of the seeds fall out. Chop the tomatoes into small pieces, and put them in a bowl.

Using scissors, cut the herbs into small pieces. Toss the snipped herbs with your fingers to mix them.

Chop the veggies into small pieces. Put each veggie in a different bowl.

Spread the pizza crust in a pan according to the instructions on the package.

Put one clove of garlic on the cutting board and crush it with the back of the spoon. Pick off the papery pieces and set them aside.

Pick up the smashed pieces of garlic and rub them over the whole pizza crust.

Spread a thin layer of tomato sauce all over the pizza crust.

Using the table knife, draw lines in the tomato sauce to mark off 12 equal-size pieces.

Put different pizza toppings in each square. Sprinkle the mozzarella cheese on top.

Bake the pizza at 400 degrees for 25 minutes.

"'Grow Your Own Pizza' shows you how to grow great-tasting food the natural way, without chemicals," explains Hardesty. Though the book is designed as an activity resource book for school children, www.farmersmarketonlin.com explains that the text is also a handy guide for adult gardeners and family cooks. The gardening advice is well grounded and the recipes are simple, but interesting.

Information in the book includes the mapping out of nearly two dozen garden plots, with varietal recommendations and cultivation tips included. The plans are organized into sections as Easy, Medium or Advanced to match the development and gardening interest level of each youngster. To make things even easier, no large garden plots are required for any of these plans; most can be grown in containers, flower beds or small garden plots. Basic gardening tools, such as a shovel and rake, are sufficient. Hardesty, who is an instructor at the Denver Botanic Gardens, also provides tips for gardens and kitchens which make gardening and cooking fun for any age group.