Learning how to make thumbs green

Marisa O’Neil

Newport-Mesa students have the good fortune of living by the warm,

sandy beaches of the Pacific Ocean. They can surf, swim, bike and --

thanks to a special after-school program -- get a taste of life down

on the farm.

Learning livestock care and vegetable gardening might seem more

like the curriculum at a Midwestern school. But students at the Ranch

after-school program at the Orange County Fairgrounds plant gardens,

ride horses and take care of sheep right in the middle of Costa Mesa.

The fifth-grade students from Davis Elementary, who are almost

halfway through the free, eight-week program, added some onions to

their garden plots last week. Jeanne Lepowsky, a master gardener from

a University of California extension program, taught them the

ins-and-outs about planting the weepy produce and more.

“Tell me what you know about onions,” Lepowsky asked the students.

“They make you cry,” 11-year-old Douglas Guillen said.

Onions do make you cry, she said, but they also come in different

forms. There are white onions, red onions, green onions, short-day

onions and long-day onions, she told them.

The green onions are just onions that haven’t formed a bulb yet,

she said. And long-day onions won’t make bulbs in Southern California

because of the amount of sunshine here.

“Plants grow in their own time,” she said. “You can’t force them

to go faster. All you can do is make conditions as comfortable as

possible for them.”

With that in mind, the students grabbed flats of baby green onions

and set out to plant them. Each child has an 8-foot-square plot of

land.

Jordan Fernandez, 10, took his pack of onions in one hand and a

towel in the other. He surveyed his garden, filled with zucchini,

strawberries, marigolds and eggplant, and knelt down to transplant

his onions.

“Everything’s dying in my garden,” 11-year-old Crystal Rubright

lamented as she examined her garden nearby.

Hanrry Lopez, meanwhile, showed off the flowers on his eggplant

seedling.

“They’re doing really well,” Lepowsky said as the students planted

their onions. “By the end of the session, they’ve really learned a

lot.”

As if to prove her point, 11-year-old Charles Burks presented a

small parsley plant plucked from its tiny home in a garden flat. A

thick tangle of roots surrounded a small clump of dirt at its bottom.

“It’s root-bound,” he observed.

Lepowsky showed him how to separate the plant’s roots in

preparation for its new home.

Joel Roman, too, seemed to have a green thumb. Everything in his

garden grew well, but he didn’t have any special secret.

“I just like having fun,” he said.

* IN THE CLASSROOM is a weekly feature in which Daily Pilot

education writer Marisa O’Neil visits a campus in the Newport-Mesa

area and writes about her experience.