Mary, Mary… How does your garden grow?

For FHE two weeks ago, GR and I took the kids on the back deck, handed them cups and large table spoons, a bag of dirt and showed them a couple packages of seeds. They filled their cups with dirt, and then selected what seeds to plant. I encouraged them to plant three seeds in each cup and to try and spread them out so transplanting them would be easier.

We had peas, beans, pumpkins, lavender, sunflowers and poppys.

I marked each cup with who planted it and then what they planted in it. Before I got the words “plant only one kind of seed in each cup,” Rebecca handed me her first cup with a pumpkin, pea and sunflower seed planted it.All three came up and eventually it was pretty obvious which plant was which (her cup is the second from the left in the row of cups on the window sill). We kept the kids cups on the kitchen window, and everyone of them got little sprouts! We ended up with two pumpkins, two beans, three sunflowers, and five peas.

Tonight we put all the vegetables in the ground. I purchased a few tomatoes, a red and a green pepper plant. Then we put the beans and pea seedlings in the ground and decided to add the sunflowers.

The amazing thing is I still have room to plant a few more things. I planted more bean seeds, right in the garden, and I’m still trying to decide if I should plant my basil in the garden, or in the flower bed. In the past, I’ve planted all my herbs in the flower beds by the front door, but the basil gets pretty tall and bushy, so the garden might be a better spot for it.

We’re taking the pumpkin seedlings to Grandpa Bob’s garden once they get a little bigger. We planted small pie pumpkin seeds – 5-8 lb pumpkins. I read that you can grow small and mini pumpkins in large containers on a patio or deck. I’d like to try it, but so far, I’m concerned about not having a large enough pot for the root system.

A late night visitor in our garage: