The Family Project: Our Yard

July 24, 2018July 24, 2018 ~ shelli ~ 8 Comments

I have been gardening with my boys since they were very young, and though I’m sure that my love of gardening has influenced them, it hasn’t taken much effort on my part to get them to enjoy it. I think all children are drawn toward nature and plants when they have the opportunity to explore a yard. (You can find links to my earlier posts about gardening at the bottom of this page.)

I have enjoyed watching how my eldest son’s love of nature and plants has evolved. There have been years when I thought he was losing the interest, but now as I look back, I realize he has always been interested in plants, and perhaps now more than ever.

My eldest son’s white-topped pitcher plants and Venus flytrap (but you can only see the flowers of the flytrap in this photo)

My younger son, too, enjoys plants and gardening. He has his own Venus flytrap which he dutifully waters (when I remind him). He likes to plant new seedlings or store-bought plants, and in general, he’s leaning down looking at whatever his older brother is inspecting in the garden. He doesn’t complain at all when we go to the plant sale at the botanical garden, and he told me that our big project this year was “more fun than I thought it would be.”

What was that project? Well, it was reconstructing the path that I had created in our backyard woods before the boys were born. Back then, my husband helped me. We had collected many rocks from our new, uncultivated yard (and a few empty lots), and with his help, I created a path through the woods. However, over these past several years of having babies, child-rearing, and homeschooling, the path became neglected and overgrown with weeds. Erosion caused some of the rocks to get buried in the dirt or even moved around.

I had been talking about cleaning up the path with my boys for a long time, and back in April (when it was cool and there weren’t any bugs out yet) my eldest son suggested we do it. So we took a full week off from our regular lessons, and we went out back every morning and worked on our path. You can see the transformation in my photos.

BEFORE and AFTER we cleared the path in our backyard. A fun, spring project.

It looks great now, and we’re going to try to keep it maintained. Nature wants to take over so quickly, and this in itself is a great lesson for the boys. We will work on it mostly in the cooler months because it’s a mosquito heaven in the summer. We’re hoping to help cultivate the woodland plants that grow there naturally and get rid of the weeds and a few plants that tend to “take over.”

This wasn’t our only yard project this year, however. After watching Big Dreams Small Spaces with Monty Don, my husband got inspired! He suggested we try putting some flower beds in our front yard where we gave up growing grass. (It’s mostly a play area for the boys.) So with my husband’s help, we got the frames set up, and then the boys and I filled them with dirt, and we selected some partial shade loving plants, and they are looking very good! (In the future, we hope to add some more flower beds and fill the spaces in between with either pebbles or wood chips.)

These flowers have given us such joy this year. They are attracting all kinds of pollinators and birds, and we enjoy taking care of them. It was a relatively inexpensive project that renewed the boys’ interest in gardening!

Since we have the yard, I have many ideas for homeschooling projects, and the boys are pretty excited about them. It’s just a matter of finding the time to do them! If we do find the time, I’ll be sure to write about it.

Tell me about your garden. 🙂

My Garden Efforts

September 18, 2017 ~ shelli ~ 8 Comments

My yard doesn’t look like the garden of my dreams, but I have fun trying. We don’t have the time or resources to create a beautiful outdoor space, but most of our yard is wooded and shady, so it’s pretty without trying. But it’s hard to grow new things in. Take a look at this….>

This is what our soil looks like! Hard, packed clay. Yeah. Not that clay doesn’t have any benefits, but the plants I want to grow need something else. And do you know how much it costs to buy good dirt and lots of fertilizer? Or create raised beds? Whoa. But like I said, I have fun trying.

I have embraced pots. I find it much easier to grow things in pots because the little soil we do buy doesn’t get washed away so quickly, and I can also put them in the sunniest place we have — our driveway. This year, I even managed to grow a sunflower. Just one. Though it was tall, it wasn’t big. I was thrilled. And you can see my son’s carnivorous plants are still going strong after all these years.

I do have a small garden area that’s fenced in, but it looks pitiful, so I didn’t take any photos of it. You can kind of see it in this photo behind the no-longer blooming hibiscus. (I think there is something pretty about flowers at each stage of their life.)

I’m attempting to keep a small area in there reserved for herbs. I have rosemary, thyme, parsley, basil, and this year I tried adding dill, which I started in a pot, of course. It’s a biennial, but I hope it will self seed and grow back year after year.

Every year I plant a couple of tomato plants, but this year they didn’t do well. This is unusual. I also planted cucumber, and we got a few of those. My eight-year-old also planted pinto beans just for fun. He used the bean seeds that we harvested last year, which his older brother planted. We don’t get enough to make it worth cooking them, so I think we’ll just replant them every year and see if we can slowly get a bigger harvest. This year we planted them along the fence, and they loved that because it was sunny and gave the vines something to cling to.

It’s also worth noting that we have a pretty cool lemon tree. Believe it or not, a few years ago my eldest son wanted to try planting seeds from a lemon that we bought at the grocery store. This was when he was still obsessed with planting every seed he came across. We planted a few of the lemons seeds, and they sprouted! One of them grew strong and sturdy, so I kept it. It took a very long time for it to grow into something, but look at it now! ….>

We have to keep it in a pot because it would not survive the winters here. I have to pull it into the garage when we get frost. (I really appreciate my husband for helping with this effort.) I also have to trim it a lot. It wants to get big! I’m not sure how long we’ll be able to keep it happy, but we’ll keep trying. It hasn’t given us a lemon yet, but we’re hoping one day it will!

Did you know that lemon trees have spiky needles on them?! We have to be very careful with it!

My main goal this year was to propagate and grow more flowers, and I was super pleased that I managed to grow these for the first time (one I already told you about.):

Purple coneflower or echinacea. I’ve tried growing these flowers before, and I finally succeeded this year using a pot.

The coneflower and sunflower seeds came from my in-laws garden, and in the photo above, I think this flower came from some seeds I took from a plant at my friend’s house. It’s some kind of hibiscus.

I was also happy that this red hibiscus came back. I don’t remember what kind of hibiscus it is. I bought it at the botanical garden a year or two ago.

There were other flowers in my yard that didn’t come back, or either they had a weaker showing. Sigh. It’s so hard to keep everything going, but as the boys get older and more independent, I think I’ll have more time to devote to my gardening efforts.

We had a great showing of butterflies this year. They loved the purple coneflower, and everyday I could see two or more butterflies on it!

Fritillary and a male and female Tiger Swallowtail

Fritillary and Tiger Swallowtail (female)

A new-to-us butterfly! The Giant Swallowtail. We saw this one for only 2 or 3 days.

Snakes are also welcome additions to our garden!

We found this red-bellied snake under our tomato plants. These are tiny snakes with a bright red belly, and we usually find them dead in the road, so it was nice to find a live one in the yard.

Black rat snakes are the most common snake found around here. They are harmless and keep the rodent population down. We didn’t notice this one until he was leaving our yard, but we hope he will come back!

Last but not least, this was the year I attempted to grow milkweed. My plan was to grow a good amount of milkweed, and then we’d order monarch larvae and raise monarchs just like we did with Painted Ladies.

First, I was disappointed that after planting 150 seeds, I got less than 10 plants, but it’s a start!

You can imagine my surprise when I found baby monarch caterpillars on them!

And they grew!

And grew!

And it became pretty clear that we probably wouldn’t have enough milkweed for them. Plus, we had Tropical Storm Irma swing through here. But I’ll tell you what we did in future post that’s all about the caterpillars and butterflies.

As you can probably tell, I’m happy with my gardening efforts this year. Any effort to garden is good for children too. The boys don’t want to help me quite as much as they used to, but they’re still interested in the plants, will help with the planting, and the eight-year-old likes to water. My eleven-year-old is pretty good about taking care of his carnivorous plants too. (At least when I remind him.) I never make gardening a requirement for them because I want them to have fond memories of our garden. Hopefully they’ll have gardens of their own someday.

Did your gardening efforts pay off this year?

Garden Time

May 22, 2015 ~ shelli ~ 3 Comments

Note: This column was published in the Barrow Journal on May 20, 2015.

Every year the boys and I buy seeds and a few plants and plant them with good intentions. My boys also enjoy growing sprouting beans in jars and then transplanting them to the garden. We don’t have the best soil or much sunlight on this wooded lot, but I let the boys plant what they want. Digging in the dirt and caring for the vegetables must have more life lessons than I can count.

My eight-year-old wanted to plant pumpkins again. We put them in big pots in our driveway so they can get the most sunlight possible. My five-year-old is growing squash in our garden, and I planted some tomato and cucumber plants. We are all sharing the strawberries and green beans. We have some herbs left over from last year too.

A new garden is a pretty sight. There’s fresh topsoil and no weeds. The new plants have that fresh garden color – a world of promise in a single leaf. Perennials are blooming throughout my yard, keeping promises planted long ago. At this time of year, it’s easy to muster the energy to go out every evening and water the garden. By August, it’ll be another story, but that’s still far off, and I’m going to enjoy this beautiful spring for as long as it’s here.

My son’s carnivorous plants are looking healthy and growing like crazy, and we were thrilled to see his new sundew plant come to life after buying it in its dormant state late last fall. This sundew has long, spindly leaves with a sticky substance on them that insects will stick to, if they land on it. He also has a pitcher plant and Venus flytrap. I think my son’s carnivorous plants are doing a service for our whole neighborhood considering how many dead insects we find in them.

I wish my whole yard looked as fresh and well kept as our garden, spring flowers, and my son’s carnivorous plants, but that’s not the case. Weeds taunt me from under the azalea bushes, and there’s not enough time or money to fix up our backyard or the bare patches of lawn. I found one of my favorite flowering bushes – the name always eludes me – died this year after producing beautiful flowers for many years. It was the same bush where a cardinal family reared their chicks in one year, and we were able to watch the whole cycle right through our living room window. I’m very sad to see this bush stand bare of leaves.

My bay leaf tree, also, has suffered these past two years after growing so well for many years before this. Is it because I’m too busy to go out and pamper it, or did the winters just get too cold for it? I don’t know.

But I see good things happening too. Every year I manage to do one or two small tasks to add to the “perfect yard” that’s in my imagination but slowly taking form around the house. The lead plant I bought two years ago at the botanical garden is hanging in there, and for the first time this year, it’s blooming. Some irises I divided last year are doing quite well in their new spot, and this year I finally divided some monkey grass and planted it in front of the fence on the other side of the house.

We are in this house for the long haul, so I’m patient about getting the yard just right. We are in the season of our lives when we have other priorities, and trying to keep a perfect yard would be a waste of money and time. Keeping it fairly neat and planting slow-growing but lasting plants seems like the more prudent way to go. Besides, when the boys grow up, I doubt they’ll remember the weeds or the lack of lawn. Instead, they’ll remember the flowers, vegetables and freedom they had to run and dig in the dirt. Perhaps this is the perfect garden after all.

Garden Inheritance

May 23, 2013May 21, 2013 ~ shelli ~ 4 Comments

Note: This column was published in the Barrow Journal on May 22, 2013.

When I was a young girl I came to Georgia to visit my grandmother who lived in Athens. She kept a little red watering can just for me because I loved to help her water her plants. She lived in an apartment, but it had a courtyard where she grew flowers. Red geraniums were her favorite.

I used to love walking with her to Charmar nursery where I was enchanted with the rows and rows of plants inside the long greenhouse. Once she bought a little green fern for me, and I took it home on the airplane.

When we lived in Colorado, our house had a sunroom, and my mother filled it with Scheffleras, spider plants and jades. I remember watching my father tend the garden that ran along the back fence. In my childhood memory that garden was very big, but it was probably just a modest house garden.

During my year in Japan, I had a very tiny apartment, but it had a small balcony, so it seemed natural to follow in my mother and grandmother’s footsteps and fill it with greenery. It was the least I could do to improve the view of the parking lot.

Now my children have inherited this love of plants and gardening. My six-year-old saves the seeds from his mandarins and apples and wants to plant them to see if they’ll grow. He found a half-sprouted acorn in the yard, so now we have a hardwood tree growing in a pot despite the fact that we have more than enough growing in our yard.

Every night he faithfully waters our garden where we planted green beans, tomatoes, cucumbers, lettuce and a few herbs. He likes watering our flowers in the front yard too, but I always offer to help because I don’t want it to become a chore for him.

My three-year-old loves to water and plant too. One afternoon he carried seeds around from some plant found in the woods. His grubby little hands offered them to me, and they ended up in the cup holder of my chair. He, too, has an acorn growing in a pot, thanks to the help of his older brother.

A friend of mine owns a landscaping business, and she taught my son how take a cutting from the butterfly bush. Cut off one of the new shoots, strip the bottom leaves and cut the top leaves in half. Put the remaining part into a small pot with some seed starter mix, keep it moist and in a sunny spot. Now my son is pulling the new leaves off the bush to try it himself. Come here in a few years, and you’ll probably find our yard full of purple butterfly bushes.

I’m making no attempts to stop my budding gardeners even though a landscaper might cringe at our attempts to grow full-sun plants in the shade or crowd the flowers together. My education in gardening has been through trial and error, and my sons are following in my footsteps.

Whenever I watch my three-year-old stoop over to water a pot with his blue watering tin, I think about the little red one I had at my grandmother’s. I think she would be pleased that I’m still outside planting, watering, and growing seeds. Someday I’ll have to take my boys on a trip to a big greenhouse too.

How to Make a Terrarium

March 29, 2013March 23, 2013 ~ shelli ~ Leave a comment

Note: This column was published in the Barrow Journal on March 27, 2013.

If you’re eager to plant some greenery, but you’re still waiting for the threat of frost to pass, you might enjoy making a terrarium for inside the house. My plant-loving six-year-old found instructions in First Nature Activity Book by DK Publishing, and he asked if we could make one. I didn’t see why not.

Luckily for me, it’s fairly simple to make. Here’s what you need: a clear container with a wide neck and an air-tight cover, small pebbles, charcoal, peat-based potting soil, small ferns, different types of moss, lichen-covered twigs or bark.

We had the charcoal, and we had plenty of moss, lichen and small ferns growing in shady spots in our yard, but we didn’t have the other ingredients. At the garden store, I bought a bag of pebbles and the peat-based potting soil. At the pet store, I found a medium-sized Kritter Keeper, and I lined the top with cellophane to make it airtight. A decorative glass container would be prettier but more expensive, or you could easily use an old aquarium.

When you let the kids do the work, they have fun cleaning up after themselves. (Sometimes.)

First, line the bottom of the container with enough pebbles to cover it evenly. The pebbles are there for drainage. Next, add a layer of charcoal. We put in a fairly thin layer, but we covered the pebbles completely and evenly.

This is not the way I recommend you put in the charcoal. By pouring it in, it covered the walls with black soot and we had to clean them. Just be more careful.

My six-year-old had fun when I put some pieces of charcoal in a baggie and let him pound them on the sidewalk with a hammer to break them into tiny pieces. The charcoal is supposed to act as a filter, keeping the terrarium smelling good. I have read different opinions online about whether it’s needed or not, but for a closed terrarium, it’s probably a good idea.

Next, add a thick layer of the peat-based potting soil, but leave plenty of space for the plants. Now the terrarium is ready for the plants.

We had to do some trimming.

We found all our plants in our yard. There was a small, pretty wild plant growing next to our house under the monkey grass, and I never had the heart to pull it out. I thought we’d give it a chance in the terrarium even though I have no idea what it is.

I also found an offshoot of some Japanese painted fern, which I had planted years ago near our front porch. My six-year-old and three-year-old had a great time going around the yard collecting moss – much more than we needed. We also found a small piece of bark with lichen growing on it.

As we arranged the plants inside the terrarium, I decided my son needed a lesson in garden design so that he wouldn’t crowd everything together. Later, I also read that we shouldn’t put too much moss into the terrarium so that the moss doesn’t overpower the small plants.

Once the terrarium is finished, you need to water it well, but after that, you only need to use a spray bottle once in a while to mist the plants and soil. Keep the lid open until the sides of the container have no more water droplets on them, and then shut it tight.

The terrarium needs to sit in a well-lit area, but no direct sunlight should fall on it. Remember, these are shade plants. Fertilizer isn’t needed either. You don’t want the plants to grow too big, and when they start to get too big or the leaves touch the sides of the container, you’ll need to trim them.

After a few days, I noticed our plants looked a little brown and yellow, so I snipped off those leaves and hoped for the best. Now, it’s looking good, and I’ve noticed some new growth on the wild, unidentified plant and the moss!

This was a fun, easy project, and it’s a perfect for children who enjoy planting or who are learning about plants.

Have you ever made a terrarium?

Gardening Experiment Success

August 27, 2012August 27, 2012 ~ shelli ~ 4 Comments

{Growing Pinto Beans In a Jar}

Remember the pinto beans my son sprouted in a jar? Well, we planted a few of the sprouts in our garden, and a couple of them have been growing well and are giving us beans! Unfortunately, they have caterpillars eating the leaves right now, so that means we’ll have to learn a lot more about organic gardening in the future. But I’m tickled pink that we got something to grow! My six-year-old is very happy too!

UPDATE: I just found these instructions on how to harvest pinto beans!

Lessons Learned in the Garden

June 21, 2012 ~ shelli ~ 3 Comments

“A new study conducted for Britain’s Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) has found that encouraging children to learn gardening boosts their development by helping them become happier, more confident, and more resilient. In addition, gardening also helps teach children patience and the benefits of a healthy diet and lifestyle.”

–Quote from an article titled, Teach Children Gardening and Give Them a Natural Head Start in Life on NaturalNews.com

It’s that time of year again for planting and growing things, and I’m happy that my five-year-old seems just as excited about the garden as he was last year. It’s an exciting year for me too because we’ve planted things I’ve never attempted to grow before. At his request, we’ve got corn, carrots, onions, and garlic, and we also have the old staples: cucumbers and tomatoes.

Unfortunately, I haven’t had time to prune back some bushes and clip the perennials before they budded (makes them stronger), so my flower beds are crowded with daisies falling over on top of other flowers, and an off-shoot of a butterfly bush is growing between two bushes that were already suffocating each other.

The yard is a work-in-progress, and it always will be, but even when it’s unruly, it gives me great pleasure to see the plants circle around to their blooming glory. It’s also the potential that gives me thrills – thinking about what I might be able to do once the boys are older and strong enough to haul dirt and wheelbarrows!

It’s my goal to keep them interested in cultivating a garden, so I don’t pressure them, and I let them plant what they want and overwater it at times too. If something doesn’t grow, I tell my son we learned something, and we’ll try again next year. My five-year-old is always talking about planting this or that, and getting a new packet of seeds is like getting a new toy.

Yesterday we went to visit some long-time friends of mine, and I knew the five-year-old would love their garden, which is spread out over their whole yard. It’s one of those cozy cottage-like places. Of course he was in heaven as he asked what the names of the plants were, and when I wasn’t looking my friend gave my son a packet of green bean seeds and some seeds from a plant outside.

I didn’t think we’d have room for those green beans, but my husband enthusiastically went out with my son and extended the garden by several feet. So now we’ve got green beans too!

When I mentioned to my son that he might be a gardener when he grows up he said no because he wants to study snakes. I had the pleasure of telling him that it’s possible to do more than one thing when we grow up, and he could certainly have his own garden. A light bulb seemed to go on over his head when I said that.

Last year I used his enthusiasm to teach him about the parts of a plant. I found an inexpensive “Life Cycle of a Plant” poster at a teacher’s store, and we also have two helpful books at home that my son likes to read: From Seed to Plant by Allan Fowler and How a Seed Grows by Helene J. Jordan. Both of these books are written for youngsters. We also sprouted bean seeds in jars.

Gardening is a wonderful learning experience for children. It teaches them how our food grows, about the environment, and it gives them something to take pride in. It’s the character-building aspect of gardening that I most love. My son has learned about patience and hard work. And for me, it’s relaxing, except maybe when the boys are fighting over who gets to water with the hose.

Note: This column was printed in the Barrow Journal on June 13, 2012.

Please share your photos and posts about gardening with children in the comments section.

A Kindergarten Child-Led Project: Seeds, Plants, Gardening

October 30, 2011September 18, 2017 ~ shelli ~ 12 Comments

Available Now! …

1st Grade E-book COVER jpeg The Everyday Homeschooler’s Guide to Teaching First Grade is a simple guide to homeschooling 1st grade. But it’s also much more. I recommend it for any parent who has a child between the ages of 4-8. “First Grade” is merely a guide. Not an absolute.

This guide will help you figure out your family’s unique priorities, and it’ll show you how to make homeschooling your child easier. Learn how to set up a learning environment that honors your child’s questions and creativity. Soon you will become a family of life-long learners.

Click here to learn more. Thanks so much to my readers for inspiring me to write this. I hope it helps.

Now back to my original post… 🙂

***

The five-year-old grew two pumpkins by himself. I’m a proud mama.

Most kindergarten curriculums include a study of how seeds grow into plants. I did not have to do anything to entice my son into learning about seeds. He is obsessed with them. Whenever he gets a chance, he’ll pull seeds off trees or plants – at church, at a park, grandma’s house or our yard – and he puts them in his pocket, telling me he wants to plant them as soon as possible. He has done this so many times that I almost want to pull my hair out, but I don’t. I just smile and say, “Okay.” Sometimes I have helped him plant the seeds, but usually I just let him plant them wherever he wants, ~~hoping~~ knowing he might forget about them. Since I’m a “green pinky” gardener, I usually know that the seeds he has won’t grow under the conditions in which he plants them in, but that’s not the point. The point is to just let him have fun planting his seeds.

But I have assisted him in planting seeds under conditions that I ~~knew~~ hoped would grow. Earlier this summer, we planted tomatoes, and to my surprise, he was very eager to take care of them. Since I have my hands full with two boys, I didn’t plan to plant much else, but he insisted that we plant pumpkins. So we did. Or I should say he did. He planted those pumpkins, and he took care of them all summer. He watered them every night! I think it was quite late summer before he finally started to let his little brother do the watering, but he was still eager enough most evenings. (He lasted longer than me. Usually by mid-August, I’ve had enough of gardening.) I was very proud of him.

Since plants are an interest of his, I have used the opportunity to teach him more about seeds, plants and gardening. This has been over a long period of time. As I wrote about in “Learning Is Like a Chain Link Fence,” I believe the best learning comes from doing and studying something at our leisure, over time, and when we need to learn about it for a purpose. I’ll continue to teach my son about planting, seeds and gardening in the future. This is an easy subject for me since I enjoy gardening myself.

Here’s a list of additional projects and resources that I’ve used to teach him about seeds and plants. And you can scroll down to see our pictures.

I found a “Plant: Life Cycle” Poster (see photo above) for less than $3 at a nearby teacher supply store. Though my son and I enjoy making our own educational posters, I have no problem spending a few bucks every now and then. (Actually, the price was probably the same as making one of our own.)
We have read and added the books How a Seed Grows by Helene J. Jordan and From Seed to Plant by Allan Fowler to our home library.
Using this Martha Stewart tutorial, we tried to sprout some beans in jars. We successfully sprouted some pinto beans, and one of them is still growing in our garden! Photos and more information below.
At my son’s request, we have tried several times to plant seeds from the fruits or vegetables that we eat and cook with in the kitchen. I don’t think we’ve gotten any of those to grow yet.
Other than this, I have let my boys play in the garden, tend the garden and plant anything they want. If it doesn’t grow, it’s just another lesson.

Nothing teaches a child about Earth’s bounty better than gardening.

My boys have been participating in gardening and growing plants since they were babies.

We’ve also taken advantage of local farms, and I plan to visit more as the boys get older. We went strawberry picking last spring.

Our seed sprouting project:

Our seed sprouting project had a lot of false starts. Thinking I could remember back to my kindergarten days, I thought we could just throw some seeds in a jar of water and watch them sprout. Ahem….This didn’t work. Then I tried Martha Stewart’s Garden in a Jar project. The black beans didn’t sprout at all but that may be because they were old beans from my pantry. The lima beans and pintos (which I bought new) started to sprout, but the limas stopped sprouting and got moldy, so I threw them out (too much water?) The pintos were a success!

This method is simple: Lightly wet a paper towel and put it in the bottom of a jar, place the dried beans on top of the towel and then cover the jar. I used regular dried beans that you can buy at the grocery store. You may need to mist the beans periodically, if the towel dries out.

Pinto bean success! My son planted these sprouts in our garden, and one of them is still growing. I doubt it’ll make it through the winter, though. Yet that is a lesson in itself, no?

At my son’s request, we have tried planting some other things. This lettuce was a success. We also planted some in our garden,and though I’ve had a lot of success with lettuce over the years, I’m sorry to say that crop didn’t grow.