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.  

Garden Unit: Day 6 Reminder and Crossword Puzzle

Reminders about gardening

Monday became our reminder day of what we had learned so far about gardening.  I had my son do a crossword puzzle to make sure he remembers important concepts about gardening.  This also gave him the opportunity to practice the spelling words that I provided him with last week.  I attached the crossword puzzle as well as an answer sheet for your personal use. 

We also had bought a soil test kit to ensure that our garden had the proper ingredients for a successful garden.  We followed the directions that came with our kit, and found that our garden soil did not need to be adjusted. 

Links to Crossword Puzzle and Answers:

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0By0QNYgSFLFKOS1ZSV9aQXlVUnM

Garden Unit: Day 5 Soil is Messy

Soil is Messy

            Friday became a day for me to prepare and set up our garden.  I end up doing a lot more physical work today and my son enjoyed the nice weather.  The lesson for the day is learning about some factors to a successful gardening experience.  There are some major and minor factors that can make a big difference in your gardening adventure.   The location of your garden is one of these factors.  Depending on your needs or wants, there are many ways to determine where you want your garden and what size of a garden you will need.   In Las Vegas, we live in a desert terrain.  The housing communities, for a majority of the city, had little to no backyard. Space for a garden may seem like a problem, however this should not stop you, as there are many alternatives to gardening in tight spaces.  If having limited space is an issue for you, I recommend using pots or even a 3-tiered planter box that has levels.  The planter boxes can be a little expensive, but a cheap pot can still provide the opportunity for you to sprout your own vegetables and fruits.  You can place these planter boxes on balconies or patios and still have garden success.  If you choose to do a traditional garden, I want to remind you now that you should contact your local utility companies to have them mark any pipes underground.  You do not want to cause a gas leak or break a water pipe from digging.  We have the room for a garden, but did not want to do a traditional garden in the ground.   We decided to make a raised garden bed instead.  I highly recommend this for anyone because it is much easier on your back and allows excess water to drain more easily.

            The second factor you should consider when determining the location of your garden is how much sun is being provided to the location.  Some plants require sun all day and others do better with little sun.  Make sure adequate sunlight is given to the garden for successful growing.  Most seed packets will display how much sunlight is needed for each type of vegetable or fruit.  On our carrot seed packet, it recommended 6-8 hours of direct sunlight.  The bell pepper plant requires at least 8 hours of direct sunlight, so we wanted to make sure that our garden was facing the sun for a majority of the day.

            The last and most important factor to have a successful garden is the soil.  This is the “fun” part of the day for my son.  I think most children love playing in the dirt, and my child is no exception.  The soil is messy and your child will get messy, so avoid wearing new clothing.  Vegetables and fruits will not be healthy or thrive without a decent soil.  Because we used a raised garden, we did not have to spend so much time on working with the dirt already there.  If you decided to stick with a traditional garden, it is probably best if you spend a few weeks on working the soil properly.  We were able to pick up packages of vegetable garden soil at our local home improvement store.  For compost, my son had been collecting our old coffee grounds as well as grass clippings from the lawn for weeks.  We mixed some of the compost into the soil and saved the rest for when we start planting the seeds.  This was our messy lesson and we continued to work on the soil during the weekend.  The weekend we had bought a bag of organic vegetable fertilizer and started to mix that in with the soil as well. If you have the time I recommend spending a few weeks on the soil, although we were not patient enough.