Getting Your Kids To Eat Their Vegetables – Garden!

April 21, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Everyone wants their kids to eat their veggies right? We all know how important they are. However, trying to convince kids to eat them can be a challenge. Sure, I have tons of tricks upmy sleeve. I puree the veggies and add them to our casseroles and soups. I add fresh carrot juice, squash and zucchini to our smoothies. I add spices and yummy things to make their veggies extra yummy, but guess what I have found works best? Let them grow their own veggies. They will then be begging to eat them!

My four year old is by far my pickiest eater. If she sees a vegetable, she doesn’t want to touch it. However, when she grows her own, she goes out everyday, and eats raw veggies all day. She will munch on lettuce, peas, beans and anything else she can et her hands on. (Even veggies that I don’t like raw.) I let her help me plant everything. She gets a few seeds, and takes quite a while to plant each one. I quickly plant mine, and hers fill in the gaps. Then, we cover the seeds with dirt. She loves patting the dirt with her little hands to make sure that the seeds are covered and the birds don’t get them. During harvest time, she enjoys helping pick. Some things she is great at picking, and others she really just sits and eats. But, I love it! How much better nutrition can she get than eating food immediately after it is picked from a nutrient rich, organic garden!

How To Garden With All Ages of Children

We try to grow the majority of our food. That means that gardening is very important to me. However, many people have asked how I garden with so many children. So, here are my tips for each age.

How To Garden with Newborn to six months:

This age is probably the easiest to garden with. I just strap them to a Moby wrap and carry them around. Or, if they are sleeping, I push my stroller up, cover them with netting and a cover so they don’t get burned and let them nap. They can’t really wander off or get into anything.

How to Garden with Crawlers:

This is the most difficult age to garden with in my opinion. I like to garden early in the morning, when it is cool. One of my children at this age was content to nap and sit in the stroller for a good hour or two in the morning. She just watched her siblings, the chickens, ducks and guineas and had a blast in the stroller. My other kids, however, did not enjoy this. They wanted to be out roaming. When they just start crawling, I bring out a blanket and let them scoot around with some toys. Once they are really crawling, I keep them with me. They sit next to me and play and I can keep an eye on them. I try to harvest low lying veggies when they are awake so they can sit in my lap, and harvest the majority of things that I need to stand to reach while they are napping. I am also fortunate to now have an older daughter, and she can pick up top while I pick on the bottom if I am holding a baby. I am very careful about how hot it is outside with little ones. We work early when it is cool, and I make sure they are in the shade and don’t get too hot.

How To Garden With Toddlers:

This is such a fun age to garden with. Everything looks so new and amazing to them! However, they also like to put everything in their mouths. Out in the organic garden, most things won’t hurt them, but I don’t like them eating too much dirt or any bugs . . . So, I let them wander around close to me and just have to keep an eye on them. I have a slide, riding toys and other fun activities for them to do. I also pick a few veggies that they can wander over and eat. Even my toddlers can be big helpers in the garden. I can’t believe how great my two year old and my sister’s two year olds were at snapping beans. They loved it, and they did a great job. They could snap beans for hours and not get tired of it. We never made them do this, but when they asked, we let them.

How To Garden With Three to Five year olds:

At this age, they really like to start helping. They can plant seeds with supervision, and definitely help pick. Just make sure that they know not to touch any bugs that might hurt them. Once again, I want gardening to be fun for them, so I let them help only as they want. They love to shovel at this age which can be great when you are preparing your garden for the planting season. They love to plant seeds and cover them up. You might be surprised at how well they can plant! Also, once you show them how to pick, they enjoy it. It is pretty easy to tell when a tomato is ripe, and mine have even done well picking green beans and peas. Limas are a little trickier, so they have to be right with me as we pick the limas. At this age, they are able to play a little more independently, so I let them play on the playground equipment where I can watch them.

How to Garden With 6-8 Year Olds:

At this age, they can really do as much gardening as you allow them to do. They can help plant and harvest. Once you explain how to do it, mine were able to do things on their own. Once again, I don’t force them to garden, but they love to help out. It can be a lot of fun to garden as a family.

How to Garden With 9 Years and and Older Kids:

Once my kids turn nine, I expect them to help out some in the garden each day. We grow the majority of their food, and I think that it can really help with their work ethic and appreciation of their food. Once you realize how much work goes into one little pea, you will never look at them the same again or leave one on your plate. . I only have one child in this age range, but she LOVES to garden! She begs to garden, and I have to make her limit her time out there. (I guess she is a lot like me in this way.)

What tips do you have for gardening with your kids?

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Garden Time

February 28, 2011 By Leave a Comment

It is time to start planting your garden down here in the south. I am so excited about being able to garden more this year than last year. (I was very pregnant during harvest time last season!) Last week I planted my green and red cabbage, cauliflower, broccoli, and onions. We also have sweet peas. Yummy!!!! I had so much fun! I love gardening. Being outside and digging in the dirt is great. (-:

One of my goals this year is to have a colorful garden and plant a couple of things that I have never planted before. I am excited to try growing some new herbs!

Have you guys started your garden yet? I spent about $31 on plants and seeds and should get a HUGE return on that investment. I love being able to provide fresh, delicious organic produce for my family for practically nothing!!

Gardening is so much fun for kids as well. My kids love to help in the garden, and I think that really helps them to eat a lot more fresh fruits and veggies.

For those of you that are just starting a garden, you can check out my post about how to start your garden.

Anything that you can grow is better than nothing, and you can save a fortune!! I can’t imagine how much money it would cost to buy the delicious, fresh, organic foods that we harvest for almost nothing other than a little exercise. So, I hope each of you tries to start a garden or grow a couple of new things this year!!  Have fun!!!

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How To Have Good Soil For Your Garden

September 30, 2010 By Leave a Comment

How To Have Good Soil For Your Garden

One of the most important things in a garden is the soil. Soil needs to be rich in nutrients, loose, moist but without standing water for most plants. We garden organically, so we use compost in our garden. Basically you can use leaves, kitchen scraps (fruits and veggies) and allow them to compost in a pile outside. You do need to check your compost. Compost does need to be turned, and lets off heat as the matter decomposes. You can’t use fresh compost on your garden. It will be too hot and will kill your plants. I used mainly leaves in my personal garden this year. I just chopped them up and turned them in the soil in my raised beds.

On our larger garden that is shared with 4 families, we use a combination of compost and manure. Manure is plant material that has gone through a living animal This provides some of the best nutrients you can get for your garden. It decomposes and becomes soil. As with compost, you have to ensure that it is not too hot when you put it on your garden, but has fully decomposed.

If you have really bad soil, you can actually cover the bad soil with gravel and then cover the gravel with compost. This way even in the worst soil you can have a great garden. The gravel will help protect the plants from the poor soil.

Peat moss can be bought in stores. It is basically plant decay and provides really good nutrients for your plants. It also holds a lot of moisture. This can be an expensive route to go, but you can add peat moss to your soil as well. Your crops will grow really well with some peat moss. Don’t use more than 50% peat moss in your soil though as it will retain too much moisture for your plants.

Most plants like soil that has a pH between 6 and 7. You can control pH using lie or sulphur. In the eastern US, we usually have to add lime to our soil to raise the pH. In the west, sulphur is often added to lower the pH.

There are a few plants that like acidic soil: blueberries (hence the reason I have a 7 foot bush), peppers and potatoes. (Potatoes just like slightly acidic soil, but will do fine in neutral soil as well.

You also want really loose dirt. You will want to loosen the soil, and never walk in your beds. Just leave room around the beds to walk.

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Landscape Gardening

September 27, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Gardening is very important to our family. However, my sister moved into a neighborhood with a home owners’ association that did not allow traditional gardens. She built one small raised bed garden that had to be made of bricks. However, she was not able to build any others due to the regulations of the home owners’ association. People from the association literally came around every single day and gave out expensive citations for anything against the rules, even if you just left a toy in the front yard accidentally. So, you get the idea, it was a VERY strict home owner’s association.

So, how can gardening work for your family in this type of situation? Or perhaps, you don’t want to have a garden in your front yard, and that is the only place that you get sunlight. You can use landscape gardening. Since, I only have one area that is about 30 feet wide that gets full sunlight, I also use landscape gardening. I can plant in sunny areas between trees that can blend in with my landscape, and still look beautiful.

Landscape gardening is becoming much more popular in recent years. Many plants and herbs are actually very beautiful plants. Rather than only buying flowers for your flower garden, why not buy herbs that produce beautiful flowers? While, I do grow traditional flowers, along the sidewalk leading to my house, I also grow perennial herbs. These can have beautiful flowers, and stay green most of the year. One of my favorite flowers is actually the beautiful purple flowers on my sage plants.

When you are looking to buy ground cover plants, you can plant strawberries. When I want to buy new trees, I make sure that I they are fruit or nut trees. These can have beautiful flowers, and look really attractive, while still providing food. To line my hedges, I use different types of lettuce. There are all types of colorful lettuces. When I harvest the lettuce every few days, I just use scissors to cut the leaves, so that the plant will keep producing, not bolt or become bitter. Also, you can consider planting carrots. Carrot tops are dark green and feathery. In the past these were often planted in flower gardens as accents.

My other favorite way to use landscape gardening is through bushes. Who doesn’t LOVE fresh berries! These are so expensive in the store, yet I never have to buy them. Rather than planting traditional bushes, consider planting blueberry, raspberry, gooseberry, huckleberry and blackberry bushes. Just keep them pruned, and they can produce many berries, while still serving as shrubbery.

So, be creative and see what ways you can add edible plants to your yard that blend in while providing fresh and delicious food for your family.

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Budget Saving Gardening

September 22, 2010 By 6 Comments

Gardening to Save Money and For Health:

I have been living frugally for years. I coupon, go to thrift shops, go to consignment sales and do whatever I can to save money. However, over the past couple of years I have been trying to feed my family almost entirely organic foods. I have read about all of the health benefits of eating foods that are fresh, local and organic. However, the prices were always so intimidating to me. So, I decided to learn how to grow and raise my own food.

My first year was a struggle. I felt like I could kill anything that I planted. So, I began to do a lot more research. I built up my soil with nutrients and kept trying. I am so excited to say that as of last two years, I am able to provide food throughout the entire year for my family of five from my garden!! It has saved us SO much money.

We purchased our seeds the first year. We spent a good bit of money on seeds that were heirloom, non genetically modified, and open pollinating seeds. As a result, we are able to save our seeds from our produce to reuse year and year.  This makes the produce from our garden virtually FREE after that initial purchase.

I am now able to feed my family of five on about $20-$25 a week on almost exclusively organic foods. (This does not include the half a cow that we purchase each year or the $4 a week I spend on milk.) I have never felt better. My daughter’s asthma is more under control, and I feel like my family is so much healthier. In addition, we have been able to save a ton of money so that we are completely debt free other than our house that we are aggressively paying off.

There are so many different ways to garden for every person’s lifestyle that anyone can grow at least a few vegetables for their family.

Container Gardening:

If you have limited space, you can use container gardening. I use container gardening for my plants that require more sunlight. Most of my property is wooded, and I can easily slide my containers over halfway through the day to give them some extra sunlight. Container gardening is an easy way to garden. Here are some advantages of container gardening:

1.       Container gardening takes up little space.

2.       Containers can be moved to get sunlight if needed.

3.       Containers have loose soil already. This means no tilling, and your seeds will germinate and produce easily.

4.       You should not have to weed your container gardens since they are up from any grassy areas.

5.       Takes very little time to plant or maintain. (Great for a busy lifestyle.)

One of the houses that we lived at, had almost no yard. I actually used indoor container gardening to grow our herbs and vegetables. My mother in law bought me a metal shelving unit covered with plastic. I just monitored our plants temperature, and unzipped the plastic if necessary. I rotated the plants so that they all had time on the top shelf. That shelf in front of our window was so convenient since it was right off the kitchen. I could just run over to the shelf, and help myself to fresh herbs and veggies for dinner.

Landscape Gardening:

Another type of garden is landscape gardening. I have slowly been turning my yard into an edible landscape. For bushes, I plant herbs such as sage that produce beautiful flowers. Rather than liriope, I plant multiplier onions. I plant lettuces as a border around my flower bed. Carrots have beautiful green tops that I plant between my flowers. In fact, until a few generations ago, most front flower beds had carrots in them for decoration and eating. For ground cover plants, I plant strawberries. This is such an easy way to garden. You can just make changes to your natural landscape. It is also a great way to garden for those of you that live in neighborhoods with home owners associations that don’t allow a traditional garden. The other reason that I love this type of gardening is that I can just walk out my front door to grab some fresh herbs and lettuces for dinner.

Raised Bed Gardens:

The third type of gardening that I use is raised bed gardening. I live on a couple of acres of land. However, almost all of it is wooded. I only have a few feet that get enough sun for a garden. I use raised beds in this area to grow my fruits and vegetables. I am always on the lookout for old shelves, trundle beds etc. to make raised beds. I have also made raised beds from purchased wood. You can check out videos here about how to build raised beds. I raise the majority of the fresh fruits and vegetables that we eat throughout the year in my raised garden beds.

Here are some advantages of raised beds:

1.       Little to no weeding since you place the soil into the bed.

2.       Loose soil that can be nutrient rich from the beginning. This aids in seed germination and the amount of produce you get. If you want to try to get the perfect soil, you can check out my post here.

3.       You can raise much more produce per square foot than you can in a traditional garden.

Traditional Garden

The fourth type of garden that I use is a traditional tilled up garden. This is a very large garden that I share with four other families. Each year we add compost to build up the nutrients in the soil. This garden provides food for all four families throughout the year. This is where I get my produce that I can, freeze, and dehydrate. We canned about 3,000 cans of produce last year from this garden for our four families. In addition we were able to dehydrate our herbs, and freeze berries and other produce for use throughout the year. It takes a lot of work to till up such a large area, and we spend 3-4 weeks working at least 12-14 hours a day picking and canning this produce. However, that month of hard work pays off for the next 11 months, and is very worth it to me and my family.

I really hope that all of you are able to plant at least a few vegetables this year to help with your food bill, plus provide your family with healthy, fresh and organic produce!

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