One of the things that made us really excited about moving from city to suburbs last year was the chance to plant a garden. This past weekend we had the opportunity to get a simple garden planned, and it was so much fun. With minimal time and financial investment I feel like we pulled off a pretty respectable first garden.

Garden4

We kept things incredibly simple with the following supplies:

For just under $150 we had the supplies for our little garden. We already had some gardening gloves and spades to help with planting, and we borrowed a garden hoe from our neighbor to dig up the grass in the area where we planted our garden. Prepping the area was definitely the most time-intensive part of the project, but fortunately is one we won’t have to repeat next year.

ADVERTISEMENT

To keep it simple, we chose to plant the following things:

  • Zucchini (2 plants)
  • Yellow squash (2 plants)
  • Basil (2 plants)
  • Rosemary (1 plant)
  • Strawberries (2 plants)
  • Kale (3 plants)
  • Mint (1 plant)
  • Onions (10-15 bulbs)
  • Red and green peppers (2 of each)

We felt like this was a good variety of things that we would actually get use out of and hopefully have a chance of keeping alive! The strawberries were a bit of a gamble but one of the plants we selected already had 3 somewhat large strawberries on it, and Miss H was incredibly excited to see actual strawberries. I think that’s when she started to understand what it meant to grow a garden – that we would actually be growing food!

After we had prepped the soil and had the garden bed in place, which took about 90 minutes, we started emptying out bags of soil. This is the part where Miss H got incredibly enthusiastic about getting her hands dirty! She normally stresses about “yuckies” (i.e. dirt/fuzz/you name it), so I was really excited she didn’t mind getting her hands dirty in the garden!

Garden1

Once we had all of the soil spread out, we added the fertilizer and mixed it in a bit. We had Miss H keep her hands out at this point.

I went to work getting everything planted. It was a rather gloomy day and rain was on the horizon, so I had to work fast! Once I was done, Miss H set to work watering all of our newly planted fruits and vegetables.

Garden2

Now that everything is planted, one of Miss H’s “responsibilities” is to come out and help water the garden and to check up on everything. She absolutely loves seeing it! And, I am happy to report, that one of our strawberries is almost ripe enough to pick. Miss H was beside herself with excitement when she checked in on the strawberry and saw that it looked just like the strawberries we buy! I think in the next few days it will be ripe enough for her to eat.

The garden is definitely one of the most exciting family projects we’ve done together because I love the opportunity for Miss H to start understanding where food comes from, and what it means to actually grow something. Assuming we can continue to keep everything alive (knock on wood) I look forward to making pesto with our basil, salads with our kale, and cooking dinners with our onions, peppers, and zucchini. And, of course, picking nice ripe strawberries!

My hope is that next year we’ll have the time to put a little more care into planning our garden: selectively choosing what might be good to grow and growing things from seed, investigating what kind of soil and fertilizer we should use, etc. But for our first actual garden that has existed outside of a pot, I feel pretty proud.

What things have you done to help your LO learn about where food comes from?