Starting My Garden & Other Gardening Projects

You may remember I posted in April about getting my plants started for my garden. This past weekend we replanted them and planted some more seeds. Of course now that I replanted them, the weather has gotten much colder. Oh, well. I have also been doing a lot of gathering of different gardening books and in particular ones with ideas for gardening with children. I will share several of them with you here, so keep reading!! The first one I found and love is Roots Shoots Buckets & Boots by Sharon Lovejoy. This book has some great ideas for gardens to grow with children. The idea we took from it this year is a sunflower garden that can be a fun place house/hiding space. Thus why we are growing so many sunflowers. We will be doing other ideas from it in later years. She also has wonderful ideas on what to do if you do not have much space and other issues.

Our marigolds less than a week after we planted them!

A companion to Roots Shoots Buckets and Boots is Sunflower Houses also by Sharon Lovejoy. I found this one this year at Drumlin Farms in the gift shop. This book has great ideas on things to do with items from your garden for children. She literally interviewed adults and asked them what they remember about gardening as a child and wrote down some of the most popular things in this book. Needless to say sunflower houses is one of them, but not the only one. There are also hollyhock dolls and more. I bought a few hollyhock bulbs and we are going to plant them along the driveway edge to help give a little more privacy from the street. This will also be right in front of the sunflower garden, so I'm hoping it will help keep it more private as well.

Garden Diary

Of course I also started a garden diary. I used it to plan out where we would put the sunflower garden so Steve could visualize it more and planned out where to plant the vegetables that Hazel picked out. I am also going to have Hazel look through magazines and seed catalogs to cut out pictures of gardens, flowers, plants that she likes and glue them in and any seed packages, etc. and any comments we have on how they grow for future gardens.

A book I just found at the library is Project Garden by Stacy Tornio. It goes month by month with different things to do for your garden as well as crafts, recipes, etc. Talk about some quality family time ideas. This book looks great. I think I'm going to add it to my must buy list. It has so many great ideas and is a great resource for some of the common plants people grow around here at least.

Hazel's Herb Garden Box

We took a few ideas from another great book, Green Thumbs by Laurie Carlson. This book has so many great ideas in it for activities to do with children. Another must look at book for anyone who wants to teach their child about the plant growth cycle and other need things with plants. One idea was to do a window herb garden. I planted one for Hazel for her room (she didn't want to help when it came time to plant it). I picked herbs that would be fragrant as well as tasty, so we could also use it for our senses. I used lavender, lemon basil, dill, sage, and rosemary.

Another idea we got from Green Thumbs is to make a flower press. I love pressing flowers and using them in crafts or on note cards. I usually just layer the flowers in printer paper and pile books on them, however I loved this simple flower press to make instead. (I have also eyed some at stores and refuse to pay what they ask for them when they look so easy to make. I just need to get some wood and screws to do it properly.)

I made a couple of changes, but nothing to serious. Materials I used are two pieces of cardboard (I used the bottom of my water bottle cases), a piece of contact paper, masking tape or duct tape in a pretty color, at least 2 yards of ribbon, an exacto knife and paper towels and a heavy book. I added the contact paper because I wanted to make it a bit more water proof. I first let Hazel decorate one side the cardboard and I labeled it Hazel's Flower Press. Then we put the contact paper on one side of each cardboard piece (not the decorated side). Then we used the tape to soften the edges of the cardboard. I let Hazel put it on one piece somewhat by herself, so it is not perfect. Then use the exacto knife to cut four slits in both pieces of cardboard where you will thread the ribbon through.

Thread the ribbon through so it looks like this (this is the side with contact paper--I used clear so you can't see it).  Now it is ready to use. You should be able to tie the ribbons into bows otherwise you need longer ribbons.

Now pick some flowers to press. Layer them in paper towels on the inside of the flower press (contact paper is on inside of both cardboard pieces). Close press and tie. Then put on hard surface (table, wood floor, etc.) and cover with a large book (I used a dictionary).

In a few days you will have some nicely pressed flowers when you open up your press.

Some books we have been enjoying to learn more about the seeds and the particular plants we are growing. (I shared a few here.)

 This looks like a great book really explaining the process of growing pumpkins and what a pumpkin is. We haven't read it yet.

I shared some good pumpkin books in October as well.

This is a counting book with seeds and then with the harvest they count by tens. Hazel loves it!

This is pretty good, but a tiny bit above Hazel's understanding level. She wasn't really interested when we read it.

We just got this one from the library. It looks like it may be above her head a bit as well, but we will see.
















This is where I link up...

Seeds, Sprouts, Plants, Flowers, Fruit & Vegetables

So back in March, one of my Sharing Saturday features was from The Artful Child on investigating peas growing in your window with contact paper and a water paper towel. We tried this in Hazel's bedroom window. She now calls our pea plants elephant trunks. However it is neat to see the roots.

A great book to help see the plants and roots is How Does a Seed Grow by Sue Kim. It has fold out pages and shows both the underground and above ground parts of the plant to grow different fruits--tomato, pepper, peas, oranges, blueberries, etc. Hazel of course loves it because of the fold out pages.

On the Monday after Easter we planted some seeds with my father. My parents are avid gardeners and grow amazing flowers and vegetables. We are going to bring some of our seeds to my parents to grow in their garden since they have better space and sun for gardening. However I promised Hazel we would try some gardening. The one thing I want to do is grow a sunflower garden for her to hide in. So sunflowers are on our list as well as watermelons, pumpkins, celery, carrots, zucchini and green beans oh and snap peas, of course.

By Friday we had some sunflowers already popping out. It was so exciting for Hazel to see. My father had cut two milk cartons in half for us and we used them to plant some of the seeds that would take the longest to harvest. Here are the seeds we planted.

We just filled the carton halves with soil and planted the seeds as deep as the package said. Then stuck them in nice sunny windows and watered them often.

We labeled the carton on the top part with what type of seeds we planted. We have one sunflower container, one pumpkin, one watermelon and one celery. Once they start growing we will replant them into cups and then eventually outside in our garden. We will also grow some carrots, marigolds, basil, zucchinis and tomatoes. Do you have a garden? What do you grow?

Sunflowers Day 9

Pumpkins Day 9

Watermelon Day 9

Since our sunflowers popped up first, we have started doing some sunflower crafts.I went to DLTK's Crafts for Kids and found many sunflower crafts. All of these came from there.

Sunflower Mask

Tissue Paper and Sunflower Seed Craft

We also started the You Are My Sunshine Frames for Mother's Day gifts. Now I just need to get a good picture of my little sunshine. She is in her I hate pictures stage. She colored these with her dot markers and they remind me of the flowers in one of her favorite books (see below). We will share them when they are completely done as well.

We also read How a Seed Grows Into a Sunflower by David Stewart, and one of our favorites is My Garden by Kevin Henkes.

This is where I link up...

Family Time

Our Easter Grass Eggs

A quick check of our Easter grass eggs show that Hazel was not great at getting the seeds spread evenly, but they are growing well. It is hard to believe how tall it is. I may add some  

more seeds to the sparse ones when she is not here so they will be full by Easter.

Weekend Time==Cooking, Snow Angels, Lent Preparation

Coming home from my parents we rushed to the library for the Move and Groove program that we signed up for. Hazel loves it. While there we got a few new books. One of them is The Snow Angel by Glenn Beck.

This story is about a sister and brother who are very upset because their parents are working so much (out of need) and their grandmother keeps spending the night with them. They have been eating macaroni and cheese made by their father (which they claim is not as good as their mother's) every night. Their grandmother tells them a story about a young girl who had similar circumstances--her father was fighting in the war (World War II) and her mother was sewing uniforms for the soldiers and she was home by herself. When her father was home on leave he taught her how to make a snow angel the last day he was home and explained that snow angels are magical. They stay with the person you make them for and watch over them. Therefore, since he made one for her, she wouldn't be alone anymore. She no longer felt so alone when her parents were gone. The sister figured out the girl in the story was their grandmother. Then they talk about making snow angels for their parents, but their is no snow. The next morning the children surprise the parents with breakfast in bed and downstairs hung paper snow angel chains all around.

I folded some white paper like a fan (back and forth) and then sketched a snow angel and cut through all the layers. Then I tried folding it smaller and sketched half a snow angel. These are the chains on the top of the page. Hazel tried to cut some but had a bit of trouble so I helped her and cut it in half so she didn't have as many layers. Sorry the picture is a bit out of focus. (We also started some more crafts to do with books we have been reading, but we will save those until we are done.)

We also started our grass egg shells for Easter. Since Lent started on Wednesday and we were away, we started it a few days late. I had been saving half egg shells from whenever we used eggs. I washed them out and left them to dry. Then I used a safety pin to punch a hole in each one for drainage.

We lined them in a plastic egg carton (which we usually use to put Hazel's paints in when she is painting with different colors) and filled them with top soil. Hazel enjoyed this part and made a bit of a mess.

Then we put some grass seeds in each one (again Hazel had fun and dropped the handful in the middle so we had to spread them out). We added some more soil and water and placed them in the window. Now we need to check the water of them each day and look for growth.

We will share these closer to Easter when we hopefully have some grass. We did this last year and used them as part of our Easter basket center piece. Plus it helps Hazel learn about the growing process.

Yesterday morning we made pancakes. We decided on pumpkin blueberry pancakes. Hazel had a small breakfast with Daddy earlier, but she at almost four of these pancakes with me. Needless to say, they were a hit.

Mixing the Dry Ingredients

Dry Ingredients:
1 cup whole wheat flour
1/4 cup ground flax seed meal
2 Tablespoons toasted oat bran (you can use wheat germ as well)
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
2 teaspoons cinnamon
dash of nutmeg
dash of ginger

Mix all together. Then set aside.

Beating Liquid Ingredients

Then we did the eggs. I separated the egg white and let Hazel crack the whole egg. Then let her beat them while I got all the liquid ingredients together.

Liquid Ingredients
1 large egg
1 egg white
1 can of cooked pumpkin (you could use homemade as well)
1/2 cup unsweetened applesauce
1 Tablespoon canola oil
1 cup fat free milk

Mixing all the Batter

Beat these together with a whisk. Then add dry ingredients and mix. Then add a cup or so of blueberries (we use frozen) and mix. (I find the blueberries hide most of anything you put in there.)

Then heat a pan sprayed with a cooking spray.  When griddle is warm enough pour batter on in small circles. Let cook until edges look a bit cooked and then flip. Press down with spatula to make sure insides cook. Flip a few more times pressing down.

Enjoy!

Stepping stones

Simba's Memorial Plant

Last week I wrote about burying our beloved Simba's ashes. We also made a stepping stone marker for him. And we made one for Hazel as well. I had bought two kits and some letter/number stamps for them. The three of us mixed the cement and poured it and then waited for the right consistency.

The correct consistency happened almost immediately for Hazel's, but Simba's took much longer--in fact I went down and fixed it hours later after Hazel was in bed. Yesterday I added color to Simba's with some paint and sprayed both of them with a clear gloss sealant. We are happy with how they came out. I do wish I had waited longer for the right consistency with Simba's so it would be so messy now.

We also planted a shrub in Simba's memory above his ashes. It is in the garden next to our back patio. We will add the stepping stone near it as well.