Thursday, 26 April 2012

Learning on the Grow

So far this blog has been a way to record our two summer goals: doing an outdoor activity as a family and helping the girls learn to love their veggies.

In the process, there has been a lot of on-line learning for Mum and Dad.

Firstly, how best to create a garden that little hands will want to participate in and enjoy. We are hoping to create some happy memories and an annual activity.

Secondly, we learned what some of the common issues are in planning any garden layout:  sunlight, soil conditions and knowing which plants like being side by side. Who knew that plants had friends and enemies amongst other plants, not just insects! The most popular companion planting is apparently called the three sisters: which means planting corn, beans and squash together. From what I can tell, we seem to have gotten pretty lucky in our planting arrangement although we will have to see if the beans and tomatoes can play nicely while they are planted beside each other!

After lots of of browsing, the two links below turned out to be the most useful:

Building a kids veggie garden:
http://www.growingraw.com/vegetable-gardens-for-kids.html

Companion planting:
http://www.no-dig-vegetablegarden.com/companion-planting.html

Despite our inexperience, the garden does seem to be doing well. We are eagerly awaiting our seedlings to poke their little heads out of the earth.  Here is the most recent update.




I also couldn't resist the temptation to add a little beauty and bought a miniature rose standard named Kordana :-)



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