Katie's Quiet Garden

Homeschooling and the Hammock 

 By Katie Perry

 I’m not much of a gardener. I have other interests, and besides, gardening always aggravates my allergies. Mostly, I enjoy our yard from a chair or hammock. I like to let nature do what it wants with our outdoor space. It almost always finds interesting and productive things to do. Our kids feel comfortable digging and playing here, and all of us can find a place to enjoy the sunshine or shade.

 Everyone in the family contributes, but my husband Rich and I do most of the yard work. We put in a burst of effort in the spring, pulling weeds and clearing out dead stuff (allergies permitting), and then we let summer and fall roll along with only occasional maintenance. In late winter we prune the fruit trees and grape vines, but some years it never happens. At times, we work alongside the kids, but other times we enjoy working alone, or together as a couple.

 Since no one likes regular watering, our vegetable garden is on hiatus. When we first planted vegetables in 1998, the older kids were 8, 5, and 2. I invited each to pick a vegetable or fruit to grow from seed or start. We worked together on the planting, watering, and tending. We most enjoyed eating what we grew. Over several years, the kids grew cantaloupe, raspberries, pumpkin, zucchini, cucumber, lettuce, and carrots. I always chose tomatoes. In his teen years, our son Alex maintained a productive strawberry bed, and he eventually took a college class on growing fruit. Now when he comes home to visit, he often spends time pruning (and there is always plenty to do!).

 More recently, we raised hens. It was another great homeschooling project. We worked together to clear space along the back fence for a coop, which we converted from an old rabbit hutch. We picked out six fuzzy chicks, one for each of us, and started them in a pen in the garage. They grew at an astonishing rate. Soon enough, Lottie, Renee, Rosa, Cordelia, Pippi, and Funky were excellent egg layers, and they entertained us by scratching for bugs, bathing in the dust, and jumping to reach the roses. After several years, we gave them away to friends with a bigger property.

 Today our youngest child attends school, we've graduated two, and we have one remaining 17-year-old homeschooler. Our yard continues to play an important role in our family culture and homeschooling life. It’s a welcoming place, well-loved, but never micro-managed. We encourage it to grow in its own way. When we make improvements, we do it together. We enjoy its natural bounty, and value its peace as a retreat. Our yard is nothing fancy, but it flourishes quietly.

The picture is a favorite spot in the yard.

Pam's Pretty Garden

 Gardening has always been a part of mine and my husband’s life. We are practical gardeners and we love growing delicious, healthy, organic food. Over the last 6 years we changed our focus from being Spring/Summer Gardeners to year-round. We wanted to grow a variety of foods and find foods we love so that we could always be pulling something from our garden. To our surprise we learned that although we love the abundance in the Summer, Winter gardening is so easy and, in some ways, more rewarding. In the Winter rarely do we need to irrigate, beds are soft and easy to turn over and it feels more rewarding to be eating fresh during the colder and darker months.

 Since we love to garden, it was only natural that it would become part of our homeschooling experience. We have found it important to plant items that our kids love, that way they gravitate to the garden naturally and join us when we are out there. Some of my kids favorites have been; Strawberries, Kale, Melon, Blueberries, Magic Beans (Fava beans) and of course Pumpkins.

 Although we have been known to visit a corn maze in October we never buy pumpkins, but instead make a big deal with wheelbarrow and all to go out to our garden and pick our own pumpkins.

 Although we have pulled activities from some books (listed below), the most meaningful lessons happen naturally.

•  Finding, identifying, and exploring bugs as we turn over a gardening bed or the compost 
• Learning which bugs are good and which are bad...and the thrill of feeding the bad bugs (such as snails) to the chickens 
• Sitting in the garden in the evening while the bats eat up flying bugs overhead has led to exploring more about bats 
• Observing butterflies and then researching plants that attract them, as well as learning more about butterflies Treasure hunting (Digging up Potatoes) 
• Learning what nutrients plants need when helping to make the COF (Complete Organic Fertilizer - Formula provided below) 
•  Making comparisons; what foods grow fast and which take longer 
• Measuring pumpkins each week as they grow 
• How to use and care for gardening tools - Hoes, rakes, shovels. Including using a file to sharpen shovels 
• Learning where food comes from 
• Cooking 

  Resources
 We often get asked what foods we plant, grow or harvest in the Winter:
Kale
Brussel Sprouts
Spinach
Broccoli
Fava Beans
Arugula
Cauliflower
Lettuce
 Jerusalem Artichokes, also known as Sunchokes. These are a prolific food source - plant in Spring, Summer they are beautiful Sunflowers, then dig up tubers as you want them ALL Winter and Fall. They keep in the ground best so no need to store and once you have them you will never need to buy more seed stock, plant a couple, or more likely they’ll be some you missed and you’ll keep getting them every year.

 COF (Complete Oganic Fertilizer) Mix uniformly in parts by volume
3 parts seed-meal (do NOT use coprameal, otherwise any seed-meal is fine, we typically use Soy bean seed-meal)
1 part tankage (sometimes called “blood-and-bone” or “Meat-meal”)
1/4 part ordinary agricultural lime, best finely ground
1/4 part gypsum (if you don’t use gypsum, double the agricultural lime)
1/2 part dolomite lime
1 part kelp-meal (or you may use another phosphorus source such as basalt dust finely ground, rock phosphate, bone meal, or high-phosphate guano)
 We buy our ingredients at Western Farm in bulk (larger bags, some in 50 lb bags) it is expensive when you buy, but it gives us enough to supply ourselves with COF for 1 year or longer and in the long run is cheaper. We add COF and compost when we turn over beds and also sprinkle some over the ground around plants and as we water, this filters COF down. It is important to replenish soil with nutrients as plant pull the nutrients out.

 Books 
 Gardening when it Counts: Growing Food in Hard TImes by Steve Solomon
 The Self-Sufficient life and how to Live it by John Seymour
 Books to use with kids:
 Roots, Shoots, Buckets, and Boots; Gardening together with Children by Sharon Lovejoy
 Garden Wizardry for Kids by L. Patricia Kite
 Gardening with Children by Brooklyn Botanical Garden
 Math in the Garden by Lawrence Hall of Science (LHS GEMS)
 Kids Garden by Avery Hall and Paul Mantel

Happy Gardening ~ by Misty Wolff

I LOVE gardening and hope to pass at least a bit of that love on to my kids. I know that they might not end up loving it like me AND they are kids and don't have the patience I do, even if they do enjoy it. So even if they say they don't want to help I still have them outside with me when I do garden so they see me enjoying it.

 Although I have dreams of a huge farm like garden where I can grow all my own food, we have a regular suburb size property AND live in the woods which means not enough sun for anything to grow to its full producing potential. Our gardening is for the enjoyment and beauty, the science and the snacks. We do a mix of flowers and vegetables, from seed and store bought potted plants, hand me downs and cuttings, and offshoots. Whatever works, or doesn't for that matter. We have had many disappointments along that way and that is a lesson in itself. When picking vegetables I try to pick ones that the kids can snack off of like cherry tomatoes, cucumbers, peas, as opposed to things that have to be cooked to eat. They like the instant gratification from plant to mouth. I wish we could do everything from seed but without great sun things just grow too slow or not at all to satisfy us on seeds alone so I end up with some vegetables each year bought in the pot. But I still use seeds so the kids, and I for that matter, can see how things really grow from the beginning, including collecting seeds from the plants we have and planting them the following year. It often takes 2 years for flowers we plant by seed to FINALLY grow a flower. We plant seeds from fruits and vegetables we buy at the store too. We have apple trees, an almond tree and avocado tree from store bought produce. I am sure none of them will ever produce fruit, but we are watching them grow anyway. 

Keeping the kids interest. I have learned to realize that even if they like gardening, my son more than my daughter, they are still kids with less patience. They love the digging in the dirt, using the garden tools, finding worms, putting in seeds or potted plants, but only for a certain amount of time. I could do it for hours on end, but have to either let them stop when they are done and I keep going while they play and/or I stop too and pick it up another day when they are ready again. And although they will happily tell anyone they help mommy with the whole garden even if they only water one plant, I think they are more engaged if they feel that they do "own" at least one specific plant. They are more excited to see a few specific plants grow than me who can walk around the garden every day to see each minute amount of growth on everything. This year my daughter picked a tomato plant as hers and my son a hot pepper. They love checking in on their plant, but not every day. Often they even forget it exits and I remind them when i see a new flower or the flower finally turning into its food.

 I have not usually done science with the garden in a formal way. I talk about things as we go, how to water, following instructions on the seed packets of how deep to plant, choosing ones that work better with our amount of sunlight, etc. No specific structured lesson planned ahead, just telling them what comes to mind about what/why I am doing or having them do something, and admitting that I don't always know everything either and we will learn together. And the hardest part is letting them make mistakes, like planting seeds deeper than recommended and they might not grow, watering the top of a plant and it might mold or get sunburned, picking the food before it is at its ripest for best flavor. I am still learning a ton about gardening each year by trial and error but learned a love of gardening from my mom too and her encouraging us kids to help and help eat right out of the garden, including my brother that didn't even rinse the dirt off the radishes. 

Our garden is much more of a learning process for ALL of us. It is not landscaped, more of a wild look, including the pumpkins that we planted next to the fuchsias, which grew up and over the flowers and now we have 2 pumpkins growing among the fuchsia plant (see picture). And of course they love to help water (sometimes). Who doesn't like to help with something that squirts water and lots of it? Happy Gardening! Misty Wolff

Gardening 101

Inspiration is thin this week. I tire of all the sun and heat. But it means good things. Lots of photosynthesis for our beautiful plants. I'm not a fantastic gardener, tho. Beautiful flowers from the nursery wither in my care. I long for the lush gardens my neighbors have. My children garden with me and love to put plants it. We arrange rocks around each tiny plant to keep it safe from little ones stepping on them. The littler ones love to help me water them. The older ones just want to play when we go outside. I can't seem to keep the excitement alive after the plants are in the ground. So I ask you and beg you for your input. Do you garden with your children? Is it a science project? Will they help you everyday? What do you do to keep them interested in their slow growing garden? Do you plant vegetables, flowers or herbs? How many days in the week do you go out to take care of it? Do you start from seed or potted plants?

Photos to submit: Your garden right now whether it's scraggly, weedy, picked over, or well taken care of.
Send your articles and photos to loriensmother@msn.com
I really am hoping to get at least 10, so don't think someone else will do it! Send your articles now!


Article and photos by Lorien Stevens:
I started gardening in Kindergarten with Jenya. We learned about different plants and how they grew. We used to have packets of mystery seeds that we would plant and see what plants they would grow into. When I started gardening at school there were tons of weeds in the gardening space. We had to dig and pull the weeds out with our hands and than after a couple of days we got some seeds and we planted. Some plants needed lots of water and some plants needed none. There was this plant that we liked to eat called sorrel. Sometimes we would sneak some of it for lunch or during class.
        My favorite thing about gardening is planting and helping others with what they do in the garden.