Saturday, April 19, 2014

My Gardening Sidekick!

Long time no see! I'm not one for ceremony, so let's jump in.

I've done pretty much no gardening in the past few years. Chronic disease, babies, new home... I had a lot going on. 

But now our first son is old enough to find plants interesting, so it's like a whole new world!!!

Simple is good when you're a mother of two little boys, and simple is good for toddlers. So we're doing potted tomatoes. Yay container gardening!


I had him help me get the old (REALLY old!) soil out of the pots, fill them with new soil, and then plant and water the tomatoes. He's very involved and a great helper, so he happily wielded his own little plastic shovel and gleefully buried the plants up to their necks in dirt. 

It's such a wonderful teaching opportunity! I've told him about where food comes from, but now he'll experience the process. He'll get to pluck a cherry tomato and eat it right there in our back yard!


I stuck with two "patio" tomato plants and a super sweet one million, which I've successfully grown in pots before. I ordered them through the food coop, which I much prefer to store-bought seedlings. 

Since he can't read yet, I made special plant markers: the plants that will grow the slicing tomatoes are marked with a big red "tomato" dot, and the one that will grow cherry tomatoes is marked with a cluster of little "tomato" dots.



Such fun!