Did Anyone Water Rover?
SIMPLY ‘THE BEST’ – BEST MOM WISDOM
Best Mom Wisdom is a twice weekly opportunity to sample ‘the best’ from the Mamasource archives.
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If your child is not quite ready for their own pet, how about trying a plant instead? Gardening is a great way to start teaching your little sprout the responsibility of caring for a living thing.
Here are a few fun and educational gardening ideas from the Mamapedia archives to get you started. Ready…set…grow!
GARDENING AND KIDS
Mcmama from New Baden, IL asks:
For those of you with a green thumb, what have you found that works well with your kids and gardening?
I’ll be starting fresh this year – no garden currently. I’d rather do something that will not take hours upon hours to weed, cultivate, etc. I had done some research on container gardening and think it sounds like a great idea!!
Have you done any container gardening? What works well? Not so well? Fruits and veggies?
I even though about doing something called a pizza garden – oregano, onions, peppers, tomatoes, etc., in a container. I thought my daughter would love that!!
Any gardening advice? I have a 2.5 year old and six month old….
Yourgardenshow F. from Claremont answers:
Plant bulbs! There is nothing more rewarding.
When the daffodils, hyacinths, or tulips come up, it will be a miracle and will really get the little ones interested in the ‘magic’ of a garden. Even the minor bulbs, like muscari, scilla, crocus and galanthus are fabulous — and they come up even earlier.
If you can find some bulbs at a good nursery, you will thank yourself for buying and planting them.
Susan B. from Olathe answers:
Gardens are so great with kids. My son loves fruits and vegetables and will often choose cherry tomatoes over cookies, and I know I owe it all to our garden.
I haven’t tried this, but my friends tried those Topsy Turvey tomato planters and loved them. Your kids might get a kick out of the upside down nature of those… and I saw some in Walmart yesterday for strawberries too.
Sheri T. from Independence answers:
Containers are a great place to start! Most of the easy-growing veggies are okay with a large container, and there is a lot of good advice online if you get Google working for you. Some, like tomatoes, will need a support structure to stay upright, and a warning about tomatoes is that the green ones sometimes get picked when Mom doesn’t want them to be… speaking from experience here! LOL
I think the pizza garden sounds great, adding zucchini to the list (very easy to grow from seed) and lettuce (VERY easy to grow, plant a little bit every couple of weeks through the entire season to keep a good supply for your salad to go with pizza/pasta. Basil, oregano, parsley, and thyme are some good herb choices.
My kids are now 4 and 5, so they will be much more helpful this year. At 2 and 3, they were interested in watering with the hose or watering cans and picking the green tomatoes. Hopefully you’ll have some fun together!
Angela G. from Mansfield answers:
Two years ago we planted pumpkins, and it was sooo much fun! They grow so fast you can watch them grow almost every day. The vines went everywhere!
My boys loved helping me weed the garden and water and care for the pumpkins. We didn’t plant any last year, and the boys missed it. We’ll plant them again this year.
Jennifer M. from Raymore answers:
We bought a little greenhouse kit at Walmart, and a bunch of seeds. I swear you can almost watch them grow! They start to sprout within a week, then you can take the top off & let them grow a bit more before transplanting them to containers. I haven’t gotten ours out of the containers and into the ground yet, but they seem to be doing well. Good luck & have a great time playing in the dirt with the kiddos!
