Day 129: guest post - mandyland

Special treat for you all today! I have to work so the girls are with a sitter.  This means a guest post is coming your way. Mandy from Mandyland was nice enough to fill in for me!  So let's welcome Mandy with lots of comments!

Kids in the Garden

As the fall leaves drop and our warm California summer turns into a cool California winter, the kids and I headed outside this week to plant our winter garden.

Planting a container garden with your child is one of the simplest ways to share a love of the earth and teach them where their food comes from. The key is to make the container big enough for their dreams and small enough for them to maintain. In our house, this means that Joseph, and now Elizabeth, both have their own little buckets that grow lettuce and spinach. They plant their seeds, water their garden and wait, in anticipation for the first little sprouts to pop out of the soil.

In a place that keeps tomatoes producing well into December, the winter garden is a short, but wonderful part of our year. We plant those cool weather crops – peas, spinach, chard, baby lettuces, carrots and radishes – that the majority of the country saves until early spring. Early on in our gardening experiments, Chad and I made the decision to grow our food organically and include our children in every step. We wanted our small garden to be a place where our they could pull a carrot from the ground, brush it off and eat it while they play. We wanted them to be able to pick peas from the trellis and munch on them while drawing on the sidewalk. I loved the idea that everything in our yard was safe. We don’t need to panic if Elizabeth eats a flower because those flowers can be a part of our salads. We also wanted them to take ownership of the garden, to think of it as theirs.

Joseph helps plan, clean and plant. He digs, waters and harvests. We give Elizabeth a plastic trowel and let her dig and throw soil in dirt pots. She picks tomatoes – sometimes even red ones. She pokes her fingers in the mud and smears it all over her shirt. And if any of her seeds actually make it into her container, we’ll all fall down in shock. More often than not, we find her radishes popping up in the lawn, her spinach mixed around the peas. It’s messy and inefficient and time consuming and so, so much fun.

Even when our plants fail or wilt or don’t bother to come up, we can still say, as Dylan Thomas did, ”Nothing grows in our garden, only washing. And babies.”

Comments

[Tami S]

I'm jealous....that you are still wearing shorts in November! And you have the opportunity to do a winter garden. What a great hands-on opportunity for the little ones. Makes me hungry for a big salad!

[abbie]

Thanks so much for guest blogging for me Mandy! Love the idea of the individual container gardens for the kids. I think Sam would love to be in charge of her own special garden or plant. Might have to do something for her next spring.

[Nurturedmoms.wordpress.com]

Love this idea! I wonder if there is anything that we could plant in a colder climate -- I'm jealous of your shorts in November, too!

[gina]

Great post! Tomatoes into December...sigh...

[Mandy]

Well, if it's any consolation...

We got rain yesterday and had to pull out the long sleeves.

I do adore the mild winters we have. It almost makes up for the triple digit summers.

There are so many cool weather veggies that you can plant! Root vegetables and leafy greens do great after the first frost. If your temps don't get much below 45, you can plant snow peas. Parsnips will actually be fine under a layer of hay, even if you get snow. I've read that they actually turn out sweeter.

I can't say enough how much fun our garden has been for the kids and truly hope that this post helps others realize that you're never too young to play in the dirt. ;)