The Week Everyone Went Outside
By Autumn Prairie Pumpkins
The last week of April, millions of people went outside on purpose.
Not to commute, not to run errands, not to get somewhere. Just to look. The City Nature Challenge ran April 24 through 27, and in cities and towns across the country, and around the world, people crouched beside sidewalk cracks to photograph a dandelion, stood still in a park to watch a bee work a crabapple bloom, pulled out their phones to identify a moth they had never noticed before. In 2025, there were over three million observations made in a single challenge week. This year's numbers come out May 13.
The observation window just closed. The identifying and uploading is still happening. And something about this particular week, the week the world went outside to notice what was already growing around it, feels like exactly the right moment to think about why so many people want to grow their own food.
The Urge to Notice, and Then to Tend
There is a gap between observing and participating. When you kneel down to photograph a native squash bee resting in a flower or a wild vine pushing through a chain-link fence, you are a witness. That matters. It is good science and good attention.
But something happens once you start noticing. You want to be part of it.
Growing your own food closes that gap. You are not just watching the natural world move through its seasons from the sidewalk. You are working alongside it, nudging it, cheering it on. You are putting a seed into warm soil and coming back every morning to see what happened overnight.
This is why the numbers keep rising, the surveys about home gardening and the searches for heirloom seeds. People have noticed something out there. They want to do something with what they noticed.
Here in Newton, late April and early May is the moment the season tips. The soil is finally, reliably warm. The last frost is behind us. The squash seeds that have been sitting on the shelf through a long winter are ready to go into the ground. And the vines that follow from those seeds will do something remarkable. They will attract the same native bees the City Nature Challenge participants were photographing in city parks. They will feed the same pollinators people were documenting with their phones. And they will produce food that lasts on a cool shelf until February.
What Grows When You Give It Room
Cucurbita moschata is a good species to start with if you are new to growing your own food, or if you have had bad luck with pumpkins and squash in past seasons. The squash vine borer, which devastates most pepo-type squash in Kansas, does not bother moschata much. The vines are long and willing. The fruits store for months without any special equipment.
Seminole pumpkin was cultivated by Indigenous growers in Florida for centuries before anyone thought to market it as a garden variety. Waltham Butternut won a gold medal at an All-America Selections trial in 1970 and has been in continuous production ever since. These are not novelty seeds. They are tested, reliable, and genuinely delicious. They are the kind of varieties that make a first-season gardener look like they knew exactly what they were doing.
If you want to understand which varieties thrive in Kansas heat and humidity, the vine borer resistant pumpkin guide is a good place to start. And if you want to know what makes moschata different at the species level, the growing guide on Cucurbita moschata explains the practical differences in plain language.
Spring's Best Offer
The City Nature Challenge ends. The season does not.
What those millions of people documented over four days in April, the bees and beetles and weeds pushing through concrete, the volunteers and the native plants growing without anyone's help, is still out there. It will be out there all summer. And for those of us with a garden bed or a backyard or a big pot on a porch, the invitation is wide open.
Put something in the ground. Watch what comes to visit. Notice the first bee on a squash flower. That moment, when a pollinator lands on a bloom you grew from a seed you planted in soil you tended, is worth as much as any number of documented observations.
It is also, honestly, more satisfying.
Growing your own food is not complicated. It is patient. It is curious. It is exactly the same instinct that sent three million people outside with their phones last week, applied to a garden bed instead of a city park.
The seeds that make it possible are in the shop when you are ready. A cup of our morning coffee while you plan what to plant would not hurt either.
From the patch in Newton, Kansas.