The Garden 2012

One of the best things about moving out of our house in pittsburgh was getting to say goodbye to my so called garden. That garden was such a nightmare.... built into a hill, crappy soil, and peppered with poison ivy! I don't miss it one bit! 

John and I got hit with the gardening bug pretty hard when we were in graduate school at Michigan state. We lived next door to farmer Fred and we had acres and acs of land to plant. We grew everything.... Lettuce, Brussels sprouts, cabbage, melons, carrots, corn, potatoes, tomatoes, kolrabi, onions, leeks, beans, peas, squash, peppers, kale, sunflowers, and pumpkins. We learned about planting beans in a hill, laying tomatoes in the hole, using a string to make straight rows. We learned how to can veggies and make wilted lettuce. We learned how to dust for beetles and how to drag a field. We spent 5 years perfecting our craft. Then we graduated and got jobs and had kids and have not had a "real" garden ever since. 

This year we are going to make Fred proud! We have 2 gardens already in the works. One garden is a plot next to the shed where we planted rhubarb. We bought ourselves a rototiller, figured out where the electric lines were in the back yard and got to work. So far we have 5 rhubarb plants in the ground and things are looking good. The kids are still excited to water the plants every day. Score! The other garden is the vegetable garden which is 25x45 feet. It is huge and we are looking forward to planting it in a few weeks. The vegetable garden is close to the house and I am planning on spending a lot of time in there this summer. Our goal is to plant the rows wider than the rototiller path so that we can till the rows and keep the weeds down until the plant grow big enough. We have tons of seed packets and need to sit down and figure out what is going to go where. The kids can't wait to plant the big garden. Today Wyatt, Jonah, and Sam planted popcorn kernels in there and are hoping to grow popcorn sometime soon. They have a lot to learn, but we are looking forward to teaching them everything that we learned from Fred.

Worms Worms Worms

There are very few things that my kids enjoy more than worms. Yesterday I went to run on the treadmill and found a bucket of 50 or so worms sitting on the treadmill mat. No dirt. No water. Just a ball of worms. One of my neighbors informed me that he got worried one morning at about 5:30 when he saw strange lights in his driveway and then he realized that my boys were wandering around with buckets and flashlights catching worms in the rain before the sun came up! They spend so much time digging for worms and looking for worms and talking about worms that it was just a matter of time before they became worm farmers. And so we have begun worm farming. For real.

John and I researched worm farming and have become experts. We built a worm box and filled it with dirt, shredded newspapers and a lot of worms. Worms compost dead leaves, dirt, paper, and food scraps. The resulting compost (or worm poop) is considered extremely valuable fertilizer. People pay for worm compost and use it to fertilize their gardens. I have seen pictures of plants grown in normal topsoil right next to plants grown in worm compost and the worm plants are much bigger and healthier looking plants. Who knew?

Then of course there is the demand for worms at our house for fishing bait. Worms reproduce about every six months.  So hopefully we are replenishing our own stock instead of buying from somebody else.

The worm farm has also been a great tool for teaching the kids about worms, sustainability, composting and responsibility. Jonah and Sam gave worm reports at school. I helped them make a big poster all about worms and they took them to school and taught their classmates everything that they knew! They were so proud of themselves! It has been a lot of fun seeing the boys so excited about nature! Wyatt loves collecting my carrot peels and feeding the worms and Sam prays for rain every night so that he can go worm hunting in the morning. I am really enjoying their enthusiasm.

Chit Chat

This little guy is such a sweetie!