gardening with kids

Visitors to our home garden

~ McArtor ~ 1 Comment

Visitors to our garden are welcome!

wpid-img_20150905_143908188.jpg

 

We were thrilled to find helpers in our garden this year – a toad, wasps, spiders and a praying mantis. They kept some of the insect pests from doing too much damage.  This praying mantis was not intimidated by the size of its prey.  After a few flashes from my camera, he flew towards it and grabbed with his long legs.  His attack reverted my attention back  to weeding and watering the garden.  Could that have been his plan? He has that “get to work” look.

Grape Tomato
It is October and we still have ripe grape tomatoes!

 

We were super thrilled to find another kind of helper in our garden this year – a little girl. Our neighbor’s tomato loving daughter picked and ate from our garden when she played outside.  A child enjoying our home garden and their veggies, that is the perfect garden visitor!

Our Garden Plot Comes Home

~ McArtor ~ 1 Comment

wpid-img_20150912_141352563_hdr.jpgFirst year of new backyard garden gives our family veggies, flowers, joy,  and humble pride.  My 10 year old son announced a few days ago, “We have the biggest and most beautiful garden in our neighborhood!” Next he said, “I want to sweep the stones and weed.”  Really.  My “working in the garden is boring,” son volunteers to work in our garden?

When our garden plot was in Howard County Conservancy Community garden, we produced more veggies.  Now that our garden plot is at home,  more inspiration grows.   A salad or veggie stir fry for dinner – pick some grape tomatoes, kale, zucchini and peppers.  Science project ideas – check on those kitchen scraps added to compost yesterday.  A break from stress and high tech stuff – pull some weeds, empty rain barrel water into a watering can and sprinkle the dry ground. Stillness – watch the rain soak the garden and revive its thirsty roots.  Welcome home our garden plot!

Fall plantings include:  beets, spinach, lettuce, an assortment of kale and two blueberry bushes in pots on our deck.

Garden Journal Catch Up

~ McArtor ~ Leave a comment

Our garden plot produced lots of vegetables in June.  I gave up trying to weigh all our produce. We harvested lots of beets, broccoli, brussel sprouts, cabbage, carrots, cauliflower, kale, lettuce (gourmet blend and buttercrunch), parsnips, and turnips.  At the end of June, just before we went on vacation, we had our biggest harvest day so our mature crops would not spoil.   A friend and her two young kids joined us for the big harvest.  My son was thrilled to have a “play date” at our garden plot. It was a joy to watch children have a blast pulling out root vegetables. They tugged then giggled as their buried treasure appeared out of the dirt.

carrots
Baby carrot (my son planted the carrot seeds)

Our best early season crop this year was the cabbage. We grew green, savoy and red cabbage. I estimated that our 15 cabbage plants produced over 50 pounds of crisp, sweet cabbage.

our cabbage patch
our cabbage patch

My mother-in-law and I had a “play date” in the kitchen. We got creative with the cabbage! We made sauteed cabbage greens (with garlic, onion and chopped apple), stuffed cabbage leaves (with ground beef, onions and tomato sauce), shredded cabbage salad. I even tried substituting pasta with sauteed strips of cabbage. The cabbage leaves were al dente and tasted delicious covered with sauce and cheese. Cabbage is a great low carb alternative to pasta!

Stuffed savoy and green cabbage leaves
Stuffed savoy and green cabbage leaves

Another Gardening Season Begins

~ McArtor ~ Leave a comment

firstdayplanting2

The first week in April, we started our fourth season in our community garden plot.  My son helped me break up the soil with a rake and hammer.  He likes to pound things, so he was content to whack and crush clods of dirt with a hammer.  Despite his destructive fun, this was the first year he carefully planted seedlings almost completely on his own.  He planted seedlings of kale, lettuce and brussel sprouts.openingday2

The worms and microbes were busy working in our garden plot already because the soil looks very healthy.  It is a deep rich brown and feels light and loose.  Almost every shovel full of dirt we turned had at least one fat worm.  We were careful not to over work the soil and disturb the worms.  We planted seeds of carrots, parsnip, turnips, beets and lettuce and seedlings of kale, lettuce, broccoli, cabbage (at least 12 plants of differing varieties), brussel sprouts, cauliflower and sugar snap peas.

Image

Gardening is a labor of love to produce fresh organic food for our family, friends and community and to spend time together as a family working on a common goal with others in a community.  May all our gardens thrive this season not only with food, but with joy and hope!

My son took this photo of the clouds above our garden plot on opening day of the 2013 growing season.  Use your imagination. Can you see the word “LOVE” ?

Light Through the Swiss Chard

~ McArtor ~ Leave a comment
swiss chard leaf

Gardening with kids is a joy, but often it feels like double the work.  Its more messy and exhausting.  Now that it’s summer and my son is out of school, it will be  hard to get all the work done in our garden plot.  While I focus on my gardening tasks, I need to keep an eye on my son.   He will wander off from our plot, visit our garden neighbors and chat with a busy gardener or experiment with a hose nozzle that is not ours.  He forgets that he can not hurl sticks and stones in the garden or cut the grass near the plastic deer fence.  He is just too busy to help me weed, plant, or pick.  Except for yesterday, when he watered his garden bed and created a mud pool at our plot entrance.

All the chaotic and frustrating moments gardening with my son are tolerable when I remember the many priceless life lessons he has learned while at our plot.   Yesterday, I gave a bag of our swiss chard to the community gardener collecting donations for our local food bank.  My son asked me, “What is a food bank?”  I explained.  He asked more questions until I had no more answers.  I picked a bagful of Romain lettuce, gave it to my son and told him to give it to the “food bank” woman.    He carried the bag past several plots and hundreds of distractions to the right woman and cheerfully gave her our lettuce.

What lessons have your kids learned while gardening with you?

Our First Snow Sugar Peas

~ McArtor ~ 1 Comment
snowpeas
snow sugar pea - delicious, sweet, crispy and a little juicy

The best reward of gardening is to see our six-year-old son look for vegetables to eat in our garden plot.  My son will not hesitate to taste anything grown in our garden.   He likes most of our spring crops this year.  He munches on leaves of Romaine and Oakleaf lettuce while we dig, weed and plant. The snow sugar peas are his favorite.  It’s remarkable that he stopped whacking sticks in the dirt to examine the snow sugar pea plant with me.  I showed him how the snow pea plant’s tendrils twist, grab and help the plant climb up the trellis.   Together, we found the first plump snow pea pods ready to be picked (plump pea pod to be picked – that is a tongue twister !).  Now, independently, he will pick one dangling pod, spray it with water from the hose and crunch it in his mouth.  Once, after he bit a pod, I heard him say, “mmmmm, they are sweet, too.”

We will plant snow sugar peas again next spring!