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Gardens come in all sizes and shapes. We fit into the small
garden category – ‘Small enough to keep under control and big
enough to provide a great learning environment.’ What a great
way to educate the children.
Make sure you choose a well sheltered area that gets many hours
of sunlight. Let your child help prepare the soil. Dirt can be
turned over with a small shovel or trowel and clumps can be
broken up by hand or by ‘stomping’ on them.
Choose easy to grow plants and as many different ones as you can
get into the small space. Carrots, radishes, lettuces and dwarf
butter beans are good vegetable choices. Mini cauliflower,
mini cabbage and mini broccoli are a great idea for small or
planter gardens. Herbs are great to add to meals parsley,
thyme, rosemary, chives, peppermint and mint. Strawberries are
also fun to grow.
If
you would rather flowers snapdragons, sunflowers, daffodils and
sweetpeas are quick and easy to grow. |
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Our
family has a corner garden, approximately 1m x 1m, that spends a
lot of the day in the shade during winter, so we decided to
plant some seed potatoes and have had great success. Some
rhubarb plants were offered to us and we planted them in the
shady garden too and our children enjoy the produce from their
garden in many meals and tasty recipes.
Mint goes hand in hand with new potatoes. Be warned mint takes
over the garden and needs to be contained. You may find a black
polythene tub useful, in my case, we sat the tub within our
garden and planted the mint in it. |
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Children love to water - particularly at full force of the hose.
You will want to remind them that rain usually falls a little
more gently and that they should imitate the rain. A
personalized sprinkling can is a good idea for younger children.
If
you do not have a sunny patch of ground (6 hours of direct sun a
day is needed for best results), then try gardening in
containers. You can grow many things in all sorts of containers,
and half the fun is finding odd and unusually shaped things to
hold the soil. A good quality potting soil should be purchased
for containers instead of using dirt from the yard. Since
containers dry out much more quickly, the plants will be even
more dependent on regular, daily care for survival and success.
Regular feeding with liquid plant food will also be part of the
routine.
Young children love growing seeds and sprouts indoors, and you
don’t need a lot of things to get started. Simply use an empty
egg carton as your seed tray, fill each compartment with potting
mix, and plant your seeds. Bean seeds and grass seeds grow
quickly, so children get results before they lose interest.
Cactus gardens, Venus fly Traps and Sundew plants captivate
children.
Children can attract butterflies to the garden by planting swan
plants, buddlea, heliotrope (Cherry Pie), alyssum, lavender,
tweedia and snapdragons. Birds can also be attracted by
planting bottle brush, kowhai, flax and pittosporum.
Tools for children are available that are small and fit their
size. Short handled shovels and rakes, hand tools and a small
wheel barrow can make a child's gardening efforts more enjoyable
and productive.
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Websites
There are quite a few websites and clubs
that the children can join.
www.yates.co.nz
and
www.coolkidsgrow.com Ambassador Irene van Dyk does
a wonderful job of promoting gardening for children.
This site is full of information for school and home.
There are activity sheets and loads of giveaways to sign
up for. A wonderful added extra is the Raxi Maxi Kids
Club which the children can sign up to and enter
competitions and receive newsletters.
www.bestgardening.com
– Kids Pages - has some great kids’ projects. At the
bottom of the page there is “More Kids Projects” drop
down box with more detailed ideas available.
www.conservationvolunteers.org.nz
– Under “Upcoming Projects” click on “browse projects by
region”. This takes you to a New Zealand map and lets
you select your region and see if any projects are
available in your area.
www.wormsrus.co.nz
– This site has loads of information on worm composting,
bins and worms in schools.
www.suzy.co.nz
– Suzy’s World is full of great fact sheets about all
sorts of things. I checked out worms which was quite
interesting.
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| Books |
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Starting Gardening – With Internet Links
A colourful, practical guide to
simple gardening projects - outdoor and indoor -
for young gardening enthusiasts, including ivy
topiary, fern garden in a bottle, spring bulbs
and salad vegetables. Step-by-step explanations
and helpful pictures make it easy for a beginner
to acquire all the necessary skills, and to have
fun growing things.
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Bill Ward’s Edible Garden
If you want your child to know
more about gardening and growing their own
plants from seed, then this is the book for
them! They’ll find out what tools they need and
how to plant seeds, about weeding, thinning and
feeding their baby plants. They’ll discover who
their garden friends are and find out who’s just
waiting to eat their juicy new plants!
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The Gardening Book by Jane Bell
This title offers fun things to
create throughout the year whether they live in
a city flat or on a farm. It includes sections
on basic gardening skills, creative techniques
and craft activities.
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Yates Gardening for Kids by Janice Marriott
Yates Gardening for kids has
directions for sowing seeds of Yates Sunflower
Yellow Express. There are activities and much
more. Did you know that after you’ve eaten your
boiled egg for breakfast, you can turn the empty
shell into a green-haired monster? All the
instructions are here.
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Yates Growing Things to Eat by Janice Marriott
A cheerful, colourful and easy to
read book that is filled with illustrations to
make turning each page a joy. It shows kids
lots of fruit and vegetables to grow and eat
allowing them to choose the foods they like and
grow their own feast. It includes games,
puzzles and experiments.
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Great Gardens for Kids by Clare Matthews
Packed with unique and exciting
ideas, “Great Gardens for Kids” shows how to
create a garden to delight, entertain and
educate children of all ages. A book with lots
of great simple ideas including sailing
boat sandpit; rope spider's web; pebble mosaic
hopscotch; climbing wall; daffodil maze;
foldaway playhouse; flowery hideaway; suspended
tent; vine teepee; mosaic table; grass stools;
growing bench; that
will delight children of all ages.
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Kitchen Garden Cooking With Kids
by Stephanie Alexander
120 recipes with simple
instructions and fun facts. Alongside the
muffins and slices are homemade pastas, indian
curries, Asian tea eggs and vegetable-rich
winter soups.
Kitchen Garden Cooking with Kids
also tells the story behind the recipes of the
Kitchen Garden at Collingwood College, which
Stephanie set up in 2001 in the grounds of a
large inner-city school. It includes plans,
activities and lists that together make up a
blueprint that other schools may wish to
follow. The program has given hundreds of
primary-school children the opportunity to
plant, grow, harvest, cook and eat tge very best
kind of food – freshly grown, organic,
unprocessed and delicious.
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