Our Summer Garden

My garden is looking a little over-grown at the moment. We’ve had lots of rain during the month of June and the plants loved it. In this mess of green I have beans, some herbs, a couple of cucumbers and lots of tomatoes.

My two other beds are full of tomato plants, green peppers and jalapeno plants.  In about a week I should be able to pick a couple of tomatoes. Then I’m sure all the rest of the plants will come to fruit at the same time and I’ll be inundated with tomatoes. I need to get my tomato plan in order. Will I make most of them into sauce? juice? paste? salsa? 

Last year my two girlfriends and I went in together and purchased this food strainer for making applesauce.  It made the job go so much faster! I’m thinking that I can use tomatoes with this too. I need to pull it out, read the directions  and figure out what to do before I’m swamped with tomatoes. Last year I got so overwhelmed that I just threw them whole in the freezer to deal with at a later date.

My girls love to help with the garden. 

(Looking for bugs while mom is working in the garden)

They are learning so much about plants, bugs, and veggies by helping me with our garden.

(catching bugs and putting them in a bug-viewer)

I love that gardening gets us outside. It allows us to observe and work with the things God created.

And that reminded me to have my older kids do a summer nature study page--to give them time to sit and observe the sights of summer.

 

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May Garden Update

My Garden is Growing!

Thanks to some help from my parents and kids, I finally have most of  the garden in now. It has been soooo rainy here that I thought I’d never get the planting done.

A fun, unexpected surprise were these two new square foot boxes. Last year I just tried to grow things in the ground, but the weeds were out of control and there were water drainage issues. My dad came and helped me set them up. I’ve got Big Boy tomatoes and green peppers in one box.

In the second box I have some jalapenos and Roma tomatoes.

My two gardens in the backyard are planted too. I’ve got more tomatoes growing in the left-side garden along with some herbs.

I’ve got lots of bean plants growing in the other box. Oh and if you look carefully there are also some squash plants growing right along with the beans. I didn’t plan that.  I guess I threw a squash in my compost pile last year and when the compost was mixed in with the soil for this year, there were some left-over squash seeds. I’m letting them grow for now. We’ll see what happens :)

I am hoping to make some salsa and marinara sauce this year. Does anyone have any good recipes?

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How Does Your Garden Grow?

Not much has changed in my garden since the first garden update. We’ve had lots of rainy and cold weather. After Mother’s Day is usually when it is safe to start planting in my area. I did venture over to my Square Foot Garden today to see what would need to be done and found:

garlic chives? I swore I would not forget what herb I planted there---but I did. Anyone have an idea what it is?

Besides the mystery plant, it looks like I have a couple of onions growing that I missed pulling from last year. I can’t wait to start turning over the soil and getting things ready.

I am shocked that my seedlings are still doing well! This is my cucumber plant.  I didn’t start much indoors because I don’t have the space and I have little kids. I wanted my little ones to see that seeds turn into plants, but I wasn’t expecting many of the seedlings to survive their care :)  Oh, and my 2yr. old pulled out all the plant stakes. So I will have several more mystery plants in my garden! :)

Since I haven’t been able to do much gardening outdoors, I’ve been taking time over the last month to do garden-related activities with my younger children.  This week we used plant printables from The Montessori Print Shop (a wealth of quality printables there!) as a spring-board for our garden-themed activities.

First we did some seed observation. I had the girls try to guess what would grow from these seeds. We talked about how the seeds were all different from each other—different colors, shapes, and sizes.

Then we placed the seeds onto the correct cards. The girls had a hard time believing that these little seeds would grow into plants!

The Plants We Eat download contains several different ways to introduce children to the idea that the plants we eat fall into different categories. We talked about the different parts of a plant.

  

The plants were divided into six categories. For the first few times going over this concept, I will keep the categories together in strips for easier matching. My daughter first matched the categories like a puzzle. Then in the second activity, the control card was taken away and only the categories were listed. Later I plan on having my daughter complete her own chart (included in the Plants download).

 

We sorted fruits and roots. Then sorted between other categories too. I wanted to keep it simple at first and only have two category choices at a time.

I asked my 4yr. old to show me what was her favorite plant to eat. We love to eat asparagus drizzled with olive oil, sea salt, and parmesan cheese.

 

My 2yr. old told me her favorite plant to eat was a rutabaga. I’ve never even seen a rutabaga let alone tasted one. I know she hasn’t either---lol! I think that will be something I’ll have to pick up the next time I’m at the store. How do you cook a rutabaga? Do you eat it raw? See, I have no clue!

So that’s how my garden is growing----so far!

My garden last year
Another view of my garden
My garden the first year
Easy Egg Garden (Homemade Chia-Pet)
Little Ones Learn About Plants

 

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Disclosure: I was given a free download from Montessori Print Shop for review purposes only. Opinions are my own. The way I used the cards are Montessori-influenced but not necessarily the official Montessori method.

Little Ones Learning About Plants

We are still anxiously awaiting the right time to plant in my neck of the woods. The garden centers and do-it-yourself stores are putting out their garden wares, and soon my kids will help plant our garden. So while we wait, I thought that now would be a good time to learn about plants, gardens, and vegetables. I decided to do several garden games and activities with my co-op toddler and preschool class.

First we read In the Garden: Who’s Been Here? By Lindsay Barrett George. The kids enjoyed trying to guess what animal was coming up in the book. We talked about what we might plant in our gardens, and shared what our favorite vegetables were.

I printed the craft from Homeschool Creation’s Garden Pack. I used this download plus the supplement I got from The Homeschool Village Garden Challenge.  (I love it when others have already done the work for me! :) )

While they were working on the craft, we named the different vegetables in our baskets.

Next we discussed what a plant needs to grow and the parts of a flower. For this game I printed the control sheet in gray-scale. Then I printed the sheet again in color and cut apart. I handed each child one part of the puzzle and we worked as a group to put all the pieces in the correct place.

I thought about doing the Chia-pet egg craft with this group, but then decided the eggs would never make it home in one piece. I found these Zoo Pal cups on sale and thought this would work just as well. The bonus was each cup came with a lid which made for easy transportation home.  I brought in a dishpan of dirt, some scoops, grass seed and a spray bottle. The children loved the responsibility of planting their own seeds. My daughters (4 & 2) still water theirs faithfully every day.

I had more planned but we spent so much time planting that we didn’t get to the rest. I plan on doing those activities at home with my girls and will post them when we are finished.

 

I’m working on my garden post for next week’s link-up at The Homeschool Village. (April 28th (10amEST) for the next Garden link up and new sponsor / giveaway!) You have time to get yours ready too :)

Getting Ready to Garden

I have been gardening now for 2.5 years. Yep. I’m still a gardening newbie. I’m working my way up to eventually growing enough at one time to feed my family a salad, or to can a couple jars of green beans (I do have a family of 8!) So my garden has been more of an experiment over the last two years, but I’m learning! This year I actually took a garden planning class at our local cultural museum. My goal this year is to be able to can salsa, green beans, and homemade tomato sauce.  Oh, I thought I might experiment with making pickles too.

 

This is my garden at the moment. Pretty ugly. It was so cold it snowed yesterday, so I haven’t even started doing anything to the garden. I use the Square Foot gardening method and love it! I hardly have to do any weeding, which is why I never gardened before. One box is 2’x8’ and the other is 3’x8’. The lovely tablecloth on the ground is to kill the grass. I plan on putting mulch all around the garden this year.

If you look through the fence, you can see a small plot of dirt. That is another weed patch garden. I would really like to built 3 more Square Foot garden boxes out there this year. I’m not sure it will get done though. This area gets full sun all the time. I plan to plant most of my tomatoes out there this year. I also have a couple of raspberry starts that just might produce a berry or two this year (that is if the kids didn’t dig it up!)

Pretty soon though, it will be time to add some compost and turn over the soil.

So for the time-being, we’ll see if any of our seedling survive being cared for by a toddler and preschooler (They like to move the sticks around and water the plants often.)

So far so good! 

My garden last year
Another view of my garden
My garden the first year
Easy Egg Garden (Homemade Chia-Pet)

 

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Garden Fun Project for Kids

Ch-Ch-Ch-Chia--- I can still remember that commercial for Chia Pets. I think I owned at least one or two in my life. It was always fascinating to see how the seeds grew and made wild hair on the Chia pet. When thinking about an activity to do with my toddler and preschool for our recent letter of the week unit, I knew creating our own homemade Chia Pet would be perfect!

Supplies:

Grass seed
Potting Soil
Egg shells with the top portion removed
Toliet Paper tube
Water
Sharpie Marker

Before starting, carefully remove the top portion of an egg. Remove the yolk and wash out the egg shell.  Cut down a toilet paper tube so that it becomes a holder for the egg. Next have your child fill the egg with soil.

Place  grass seeds in the soil and then cover with more soil.

  

Carefully water the egg-shell garden.

 
Draw silly faces on the eggs with a marker. Give them some TLC, sunshine,and water, and after awhile they will grow groovy hair. The perfect table-top garden for kids!

P.S. You can cover the toilet paper tube with cardstock to make a pretty holder. My kids were too impatient and wanted to make their garden right away! You can also paint the egg shell before planting.

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