I know what you are thinking.. you've read a post or many that refer to little S and know the kid is sixteen months at this point and was just one when I started the garden.. and you are now convinced I over think a lot of things. I'll give you that one. I do but at the same time have you put as much thought into what your child may learn through something you do together?
Gardening is new to me and not something I am all that comfortable with but it teaches not only the cycle of life, it teaches responsibility, nurturing, hard work and a healthy respect for mother nature that can't be beat by just reading about it. Kids and often adults learn best when you add action to a lesson and repetition is a good thing. I know a year old won't understand all the concepts, get the idea or think much more than mommy is playing in the dirt; however, someplace inside his brain is absorbing as much detail as mine is and storing all that information for when he has the vocabulary and experience for it to click later.
I had us start small this year just a few containers sure I could tell you it was scaled to Little S's size but the reality is with a smaller size it was more manageable for me both as a time investment as well as a success or failure activity. I work a paid job with little pay but the luxury of doing it from home and it's 55+ hours a week at my desk. I also care for little S full time and we have two cats, a dog and sometimes two bigger kids when M's other children are visiting. I wanted something that wouldn't take up so much time I began to hate it but that would still contribute to our summer food budgeting.
Little S and I had a mommy and son trip to the store and chose a variety of things to plant. We chose things we like to eat and that would help me stretch the budget this summer. We got starter plants for most of the garden as a way to give us a head start and a leg up on the success. We planted our garden in containers as we were still experiencing freezing rain when we started in May and wanted to be able to bring the containers inside the garage if needed.
We planted:
Bin 1- 1 orange bell pepper plant and 6 onion bulbs
Bin 2- 1 cucumber plant and 1 summer squash plant
Bin 3- 1 watermelon plant and half a package of carrot seeds
Bin 4- 2 kinds of tomato plants and 4 onion bulbs
Our bins looked like this:
We had some successes and some failures and a bit of a learning curve; however, this is definitely something we will be doing again.
In review things we learned:
- We need a raised planter box for better drainage- we ended up needing more holes in our containers.
- We need some sort of fencing to keep little ones and bunnies out - our garden was tall enough to avoid most of this danger this year.
- When the seed package says to go back and thin out the plants - follow those instructions. Our carrots suffered from not following this step and so did the watermelon that was sharing the container.
- The cucumber and squash need their own space - the leaves from the squash prevent the cucumber from getting enough light to thrive.
- Cucumbers are prickly and strange when not covered in wax from the store
- Even a few plants make a big difference in food costs.
- Go Big! Next year we need a bigger garden.
This is a sample of one of our harvests this summer: two cucumber, 1 summer squash and three tomatoes.
Our final results.. (yes I kept track I am a spreadsheet nerd like that)
1 bell pepper plant = 12 bell peppers
10 onion bulbs = 10 onions
2 tomato plants = 30 tomatoes for us, 20+ for the caterpillars and 20+ that never got past green.
1 summer squash plant = 8 summer squash
1 Cucumber plant = 5 large cucumber
Carrots = we yielded 25 baby carrots * see note above
1 watermelon plant = 2 baby watermelon
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