Gardening With Your Kids

Since we started our first family garden a year ago, we've tried to get the kids as involved as possible in the whole gardening process. They definitely LOVE planting seeds, helping us plant a few hundred in little Jiffy pots.

On a recent Family Home Evening or FHE night (we set aside one night a week for special family activities), we helped the kids plant their very own seeds.

We got these from Lowe's in the gardening section. They're special Veggie Tales Larryboy, probably the kids' favorite character, marigold seeds. Had I been thinking, I would have snapped a shot of the marigolds. It's hard to describe exactly, but they looked almost like tiny feathers.

We made sure to mark these greenhouse lids with the kids' initials so neither one could fight over them. The best light to grow these marigolds is outside (we don't get very good light inside the house due to the placement of the house on the property and the fact that we're surrounded on 3 sides by gianormous trees). So we put the kids' greenhouses inside the family greenhouse, a new and very inexpensive addition to our garden. Hubs got this up in Minnesota last Summer while visiting family; I think he paid about $20 for it.

See all our little seeds growing? We have baby-size spring lettuce, peas and corn that have already sprouted. The leafy green lettuce & kale on the bottom were bought at Lowe's, not originally grown by us. I can't find kale seeds anywhere, and I really, really love kale, but haven't made it in years. Definitely not since I got married. I found it at Lowe's and thought I'd give it a try in the garden this year. And I'm ready for some home-grown salad and didn't want to wait until our lettuce babies grew up.

Not too much longer and we'll be planting these all in the garden--woohoo!!