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Garden Gongs
A while back my friend Stacy posted about a “banging wall” that her kids had a blast playing with. The idea came from SouleMama, whose impressive wall looks like this: My garden gongs were inspired by the “banging wall” and the awesome gong at Crazy Fire Mongolian Grill. What kid shouldn’t have a gong to announce his arrival at his garden? We had some old pvc pipe from last summer’s attempt at building a support cage for the tomato plants.…
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10 Weeks of Vegetable Gardening: Week 4
Each Friday I am posting a weekly guide for prepping your home vegetable garden. In Raleigh, the last killing frost date is April 11 (on average, give or take a week), so my first weekend for planting outdoors is April 9. Do you have a cold frame? Joe built me one last year so I could move my plants outside and our family could once again eat in our dining room. A cold frame isn’t essential, but it does have…
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Soda Bottle Garden
This is a great little recycling project I’ve seen variations of in many gardening blogs. I decided to keep it as simple as possible so I could involve the Man-child who just turned three. These teaches about reusing materials and caring for plants. How to make a soda bottle garden: You will need plastic bottles from your recycling bin, scissors, two rocks big enough to stop up the bottle opening, potting soil, plants, water, and four pipe cleaners or twine.…
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Set for Success
I’ve found that when if comes to having successful playtime with the boys (and the Man), it is important not to set them up for failure. In the realm of gardening, this means supplying them with the proper tools and gear. For instance, the picture on the left shows the Man-child with the Man’s shovel. It is clearly too heavy, and he was whining. The picture on the right shows him with a more size-appropriate tool. Purchasing kids’ tools isn’t…
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Here We Go!
Well, here it is, and here they are. This is the spot of my future garden and these are my three boys, my loves. There is the Man, the Man-child, and the Baby. Gardening is something we do as a family. It preoccupies our weekends and ravages our dining room during the winter and early spring. We all get dirty. The Man does the heavy lifting, I do the planting weeding, the Man-child runs around runs around making sure everything…
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10 Weeks of Vegetable Gardening: Week 3
Each Friday I am posting a weekly guide for prepping your home vegetable garden. In Raleigh, the last killing frost date is April 11 (on average, give or take a week), so my first weekend for planting outdoors is April 9. I have a tendency to do before planning and end up with far more things to plant than there is space for. However, if you are willing to put in a little time and thought, there is no need…
