Garden Unit: Day 10 Gardening Quiz

Gardening Quiz

            Friday is our “review” day in most of our homeschooling subjects.  We will sometimes watch a movie related to the subject or find a craft or take a mini-quiz.  For gardening, I created a mini quiz that included our spelling words, math, and information about gardening that he needs to know.   I attached the mini-quiz and answers for your personal use.  After he took the quiz, I wanted him to paint a picture of his favorite part of gardening.  The gardening lesson unit will then be completed.  Though, our gardening adventure will continue on as long as we are interested in gardening.

           

Conclusion:

            My son really enjoyed this curriculum and I hope this h  We are still waiting to harvest all of our food, but our bell peppers are looking great so far.  I hope you enjoyed this homeschooling guideline and I wish good luck with your gardening adventure.

elps with your homeschooling lessons.

Quiz: *Spelling words will need to be said by parents out loud*

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0By0QNYgSFLFKbE9QUXlCdTVBVzA

Quiz Answers:

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0By0QNYgSFLFKeUJINUNWZWNZOFU

Garden Unit: Day 9 Garden Problems/ Garden Math

Garden Problems

            There are many problems that can happen to a garden that might not make it as successful.  This lesson I created for the curriculum, weeks after we first planted the seeds.  However, I felt it was an important addition to my son’s gardening education.  For this day, we had another lecture and here are some common problems we found in our gardening adventure: 

·      The first issue we seemed to have is animals playing around the plants. We had a neighborhood cat that liked to walk on the soil.  We also had a bird that seemed interested in the bell pepper plant.

o   Solution 1: place a net around the grapes to prevent the birds from picking at them

o   Solution 2: Place a small picket fence to keep other animals away from the garden areas

·      Another problem that we encountered was the wind.  The week after we planted the seeds, we end up having very strong winds that blew the lightweight picket fence right out of the ground.  The little bell pepper plant did not look very good the next few days, and we were worried that the wind was too harsh on our plants.

o   Solution 1: place a wind protector

·      Shriveling leaves and holes in the leaves could mean your plant has bug problem or a disease. 

o   Solution 1: There are many solutions you can buy at the store to prevent and cure diseases as well as deter bugs.

·      Leaves burning on the edges could mean that the plant is not getting enough water or is getting too much water

o   Solution 1: buy a moisture kit to determine if your plant is getting enough water.

o   Solution 2: If weeds are sprouting in the garden, they should be pulled to avoid them from stealing water from the vegetables or fruits.

After our discussion with the problems and finding solutions that may help, I gave him a Garden math worksheet that I created.  It was simple math for him, but he loved the garden word problems.

Link to Math Worksheet:

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0By0QNYgSFLFKZUpLWngzdEVBeHc

Link to Math Worksheet Answers:

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0By0QNYgSFLFKYXozLVNqd1BMVmM

Garden Unit: Day 8 Garden Maintenance

Maintenance

            Gardening can require a lot of maintenance work.  The most basic need is ensuring the plants are getting enough water, nutrients, and sunlight.  However, there is also other maintenance work that needs to be done for a great quality home garden.

When we were viewing the grapes, we noticed a lot of dead branches that needed to be cut away.  There were still some healthy branches sprouting green leaves and buds so it still gave us hope for the grapes.  We decided to trim the dead branches with garden clippers.  Trimming and cutting away unwanted dead branches allows the plants to grow more.  This is something you should be doing throughout your gardening experience.  We also looked for weeds to pull out of the ground as this can take away the water from our vegetables.  This took quite a bit of work and I was a little surprised on how well my son handled it.  He used garden clippers properly and he was very careful not to hurt the plant. 

We then wanted to test the soil of the grapes since we did not do this yet.   The soil seemed to be fine. We also wanted to test the water/moisture levels to see if it was getting enough water from the drip system that was already in place.  It did indicate that our grapes were not receiving enough water, so we increased the timer on our drip system.   

             For today’s activity, I wanted my son to create a garden to-do chart.  This will be something he will do after his lessons for the day.  I wanted him to have a set of days and time to water the plants and do any other maintenance work.  This will make him feel responsible for his garden as well as remind him of all the hard work he is doing.  I created a weekly to-do chart and my son got to choose when he wanted to water the plants.  He also wanted to check the levels of the soil and moisture every two weeks so he wrote that in as well.  The basics of my son’s weekly chart is:

Sunday: Soil Test every two weeks

Monday: Water the carrots and bell peppers, check on the grapes

Tuesday: Trim dead branches and trim excess leaves

Wednesday: Check the moisture readings every two weeks

Thursday: Pull Weeds and spread mulch to avoid more weeds from sprouting

Friday:  Water the carrots and bell peppers, check on the grapes (if needed)

Saturday: Day Off

I attached a weekly chart that we used for this activity, for your personal uses.  My son also wanted to decorate his chart by adding stickers and drawing some more vegetables and fruits.  There is space on our weekly chart to do that if your child is interested.  We placed his chart on his door to his room.

We also wrote in an estimated date on our home yearly calendar of when the carrots, grapes, and bell peppers could be harvested for eating. They are not ready to be harvested as of yet, but I cannot wait until we get to this point.

Link to Chart:

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0By0QNYgSFLFKN0dyczZxYmZfUDA

Garden Unit: Day 7 Planting Day

Planting Day!

            Planting day! My son has been looking forward to this day since we started this project.  I told him to grab his tools, seeds, and notes and meet me in the backyard.  As we prepared, he made sure that we had everything on our list.  We first discussed how we wanted to set up our garden.  There are a few ways to planting in your garden.  You can create rows or squares or stagger each plant.  We decided to try a triangular shape that was recommended by a friend.  We dug little holes in the shape of a triangle and placed 2-3 carrots in each hole about 12 inches apart from each other.  We placed some of the leftover compost in each hole and then filled the rest of the hole with soil.  We end up having about 4 triangles. We then placed a garden identification stake that said “carrots” to mark where they were placed.

We then dug a bigger hole to fit the biodegradable pot with our bell pepper plant in it, and placed it further away from the carrots to make sure it had enough room.  We added a tiny bit of compost and filled the soil in around the plant.  My son then wrote down “peppers” on an identification stake and placed it next to the bell pepper.

             After planting the seeds and the pepper plant, my son sprinkled some water using our watering can and we went to the side of the house to check on the grapes.  We found that the grape plants were still alive but did not need anymore water, as there is a drip system in place.   We did notice that the grapes needed some major maintenance work on them.  I told my son that tomorrow we would learn about the responsibility of maintaining the upkeep of these plants to grow.