Growing up, both Carl and I moaned and whined about helping out in our family’s respective vegetable gardens (especially picking beans, O Woe and Misery!). So naturally, in the last few years, we’ve been wanting to inflict – I mean, introduce our girls to what it’s like to grow at least a portion of one’s food. We weren’t able to do it when we were living at our old place, due to having no space at all to ourselves outdoors, but here in this house, we have loads of yard, front and back. Poor soil quality, though, so we’re doing container gardens instead of planting right in the ground.
I was all for buying seedling already started, but Carl pulled for starting right from seeds, and in thinking about how much more the girls will learn when they get to see the entire process from start to finish (in the grand old homeschool tradition, we are calling this “science class” and we’ll be studying about growing things right along with watching our seeds), I capitulated.
We planted the seeds in our little black plastic starter containers on Sunday, and we have been working ever since at keeping the littles from pulling off the lid to poke and prod, checking to see if their seeds have come up yet. We planted peppers, tomatoes, lettuce, spinach, peas, carrots, marigolds, lavender, and impatiens (lavender for Grace, who wanted “pupple fwowers,” and impatiens for Joy who wanted pink flowers, and marigolds to help ward off mosquitoes), and we are all, even Carl, getting excited about watching them grow, seeing which crops work the best, and enjoying the fruit of our labors this summer.
I love gardens! My husband and I head to a local nursery in May every year to pick out seedlings for our garden. It's fun! And there's nothing like heading to the backyard for dinner additions. 🙂 Enjoy!
The weather has been PERFECT for gardening the past few days and i've been too sick to do it! But the kids have gone out by themselves to dig in the dirt, claiming enthusiastically to be "gardening," so this is a start…
How awesome! I've had gardens for most of my life–homegrown food is so wonderful. 😀 Hope you guys get lots of food!
How fun! I hope it goes well for you! Just a little warning though, lavender has a notoriously low germination rate… so if you only get a few plants from a whole packet of seeds, don't worry that you did something wrong. 🙂
I remember being a kid and accompanying Mom and Dad to the nursery every year. That was the fun part. Taking care of the garden once it was planted and everything had started to grow? Oh, the misery! Except for peas; I always loved picking (and eating) fresh peas!
Ugh to the sick! My two love "helping" whenever they visit anyone who has a garden, and think being able to just pick food and eat it right away is the coolest thing ever, which is one of the reasons we decided to give it a try this year. Catch 'em while they still think it's fun!
Even if we only get a tiny crop this year, it'll be exciting to start learning and adventuring with this. Carl was more actively involved in the entire gardening process as a kid than I was, so right now we're leaning heavily on his direction, and giving frequent calls home to parents for tips.
Thanks for the tip, Val! For Gracie's sake, I hope we at least get a couple of lavender plants. She'll be awfully disappointed to not get her pupple flowers, otherwise.