Lessons from the Garden

OK, one gardening season under my belt and I learned so much!!

• Planting early really does make a difference. I think about this a lot as I look at my tiny little eggplants and just hope for a few more of these 70+ degree fall days. Next year, I'll be ready!


• Some years, there just isn't enough sun. I harvested TWO red tomatoes. Too bad I'm not hosting a Fried Green Tomatoes movie as I had hundreds of them! I take heart in the fact that I'm not alone after reading a recent local newspaper article dedicated to all us sun-deprived Seattle gardeners.


• When the seed package says, "Plant 3 feet apart," they really mean it. I planted 3 tomato plants and it looked like a jungle.


• Good soil makes a huge difference!



Stake plants before they get unruly. It is not possible to get a bigger tomato cage over the top of a tomato plant that has outgrown its too-small cage!

• Gardens are a natural draw for kids. There's nothing better than hearing my boys show off their garden to friends that come to the house.
• Home grown really does taste better, but... it does not necessarily make picky eaters into overnight vegetable lovers. Sometimes I just have to be happy that they will help grow, harvest, and wash the vegetable!

How Does Your Garden Grow?

I've wanted to post this for about 2 months now, but here it is June 18th and I can officially say I have a garden - YEAH!!!

Obviously, I'm getting a late start, but the problem was I had a jungle gym in the only sunny, flat piece of my property, which added significant time to the project. Once the jungle gym was gone, then I had to deal with the fact that I had an 18" deep gravel pit. After contemplating various options for removing it, I finally just decided it was good drainage and the garden would have to go on top.

Now, I have 2 raised beds built with concrete blocks - nothing bad seeping into the soil and they should last forever. The soil is the special veggie soil from Cedar Grove - as my kids said, "It smells awful" so I figure it must have all the good nutrients. I will confess I didn't build them myself - the blocks are 60 pounds apiece and, as you can see from the picture, it took a lot of them!

I am a complete novice at this, but happy to be experimenting. I have one bed for warm season vegetables and one for cool season vegetables. Altogether, I have corn, snow peas, peas, beans, tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, eggplant, potatoes, lettuce, onions, green onions, carrots, parsnips, basil, thyme, and oregano. I also have some zucchini and pumpkins, but they didn't fit into the beds. I figure they both grow well and need lots of space so I planted them where they would have more room.

It was fun planning and planting with the kids and now I'm looking forward to harvesting later this summer. All we need is SUNSHINE!

Plant a Fairy Garden

I went to Sorticulture, a local garden fair, a few days ago in search of some plant starts for my vegetable garden (update coming soon!) and happened up on this cute minature garden done by Two Green Thumbs.

I'm new to miniature gardens, but it seemed like an idea that might be fun for kids. The idea is to plant slow-growing miniature plants and create your own little world. You can complete it with tiny furniture or even small dolls or animal figures. Sort of like an outdoor dollhouse!

I don't know that my boys would be into a "fairy" garden, but maybe a miniature troll garden could pique their interest! Take a look at the Two Green Thumbs website for ideas.

A Bountiful Summer

Summer is over and fall is here, but I'm still trying to hold on to the lingering days. I stocked up on everbearing strawberries at our last Farmer's Market of the year. I didn't even know there was a such thing as "everbearing" strawberries, but they are yummy. Most of these went into the freezer along with my raspberries and blueberries from earlier in the summer. These, plus the peaches and pears that a friend brought over from Yakima, should keep me in fruity smoothies for months. Yeah!

My parent's garden still had lots of tomatoes so they went into a tasty tomato dill soup. All these fresh foods may make me into a cook yet - of course, there was the incident with the blender, but maybe I've learned my lesson this time. I didn't know mixing hot foods in a blender was so different than cold foods. My advice to anyone else trying this is: don't overfill the blender and make sure you hold the lid tight. Just cooked pureed tomatoes can really burn the skin. I'll let your imagination fill in the rest of the details!

With the end of summer it was finally time to pick the pumpkins that my kids have been ogling in their grandparents' garden for months.. The kids decided long ago which pumpkin belonged to which child, but they do grow unpredictably, so the youngest child ended up with the biggest pumpkin. Here is Sydney in the garden back when the pumpkins were still green.

The next picture shows Stephen pointing to her pumpkin (which eventually made it to our house since Sydney wasn't close enough to claim it for herself). All in all, we had a fun time, picking and weighing the pumpkins. The biggest came in at 24 pounds! All in all it's been a great summer! Now, it's on to Fall.

Veggie Video Game?

Image by dboy via Flickr

I know there are children who love veggies, but I do not live in that family. I'm always looking for new ways to get them to eat their veggies so I was intrigued when I heard about Hidden Valley's new video game Love Your Veggies.

Can a video game featuring a water hose to scare away critters and a truck driving around obstacles to get to market (your typical shooting and dodging video game) actually encourage a child to eat veggies? Well, no probably not, but it intrigued me because ranch drip is the one thing that actually does encourage my youngest son.

Hidden Valley says that the game is based on a study that showed that kids "consumed more vegetables when paired with a moderate amount of ranch dressing." Personally, I believe them, although I would change the phrase to kids consumed more vegetables when drowned in gallons of ranch dressing. At least that's how it works in our house.

My theory of the moment is that having our own garden will help my kids learn to eat their veggies. The garden is not exactly thriving--I'm learning it really is all about location--but my kids have chomped on fresh basil, lettuce, cherries, and a day lily in the past few days. The last one was prompted by a gardener who told them that particular flower was edible. (Don't take my word for it though as some lilies are poisonous. If you want more info, here's an edible flower list to check out.)

The funny thing was that the carrot had so much yummy flavor compared to the typical store-bought carrots that they really noticed the taste difference. One of my kids loved it, while the other wasn't so sure, but I still view it as progress. Besides, he's the one that usually drowns his veggies in ranch dip!

By the way, Stephen and I played the video game together. He'll still probably pick Webkinz over Hidden Valley next time he's on the computer, but he did manage to grow 43 veggies in a minute. I played the next level and managed to spill 27 of those veggies out of the truck, but ah well, I never claimed to be a gamer.

The Vegetable Experiment - Part I

The three-bite rule.
The no-thank you bite.
The shred-it-and-hide-it-in-the-sauce trick.

In my quest to get a morsel of vegetable into my seven-year-old's tummy, I have tried all of the above and more - everything from patiently waiting ("let the child decide when he's ready to eat the vegetable") to bribing with dessert - I know it's not recommended, but it does work sometimes...

I suppose I can't complain. He happily eats peas and corn, although a fellow mom in the same shoes pointed out to me that corn hardly qualifies - it's kind of like counting french fries as a vegetable. Although he will suffer through 1 baby carrot, 1 green bean, 1 broccoli stem, or 1 forkful of lettuce, the offending vegetable must first be drowned in either parmesan cheese or ranch dip. I'm not sure its worth it based on the microscopic amount of vegetable he actually ingests on these occasions.


My new plan is The Vegetable Experiment. Let him plant the vegetables, let him watch them grow, let him care for them, let him eat them. OK, I realize that the final step may be a complete bust. The mom I mentioned above said she is on her 3rd garden and her son's vast vegetable palate is still limited to salsa and tomato sauce.

Regardless, we're plunging forward. The seeds have been planted and they are now growing in Stephen's room where they can get a warm and sunny start. He was thrilled to see them pop up on Day 1 (to be honest, as the neophyte gardener that I am, I was quite surprised) and now thinks on Day 4 that they've outgrown their peat pellets. I'm voting for a little longer inside.

Is he going to eat the vegetables? I have no idea, but I figure we'll benefit in other ways - fresh organic vegetables that did not have to be trucked across the country or shipped around the world to make it to our table. While I would love it if he would try something new, I'm vowing to just enjoy the process. If all goes well with the garden, at least I'll have yummy veggies to eat this summer!