Our Growing Garden

My friend won a garden plot in the school community gardens a little while ago and asked if Nathan would be interested in taking care of the garden with her son. We envisioned the boys working together to weed out the garden, then they would plant seedlings of the vegetables they wanted to grow, and they would have the responsibility of watering the garden and taking care of the plants.

That was the idea anyway.

When we finally found out which plot was ours, the boys were very excited about it. Our plot was overgrown with weeds and grass, and needed to be cleared out before we could plant anything. Even then the boys were excited to be digging, but mostly they were excited about getting the best tool and using it to chop the weeds into little pieces.

So in the end, it took the combined effort of my friend and I, plus her husband and her dad, to clear out our little patch. Then, it was time to plant!

That first week, a random assortment of vegetables were planted: spring onions, beet root, tomato and land cress (our alternative to watercress which requires a lot of, well, water). Oh, and there was that mint plant that was left over from the previous gardeners.

The second week, my friend sprinkled in a couple rows of bok choy seeds.

Our third week, the boys assisted in planting four neat rows of more bok choy and carrot.

And now in our fourth week, we also have four little kale plants added to our garden.

We also have these little weeds springing up among our bok choy seeds. We're not entirely sure what they are but we'll let them hang around until our seedlings are big enough for us to tell what's edible and what's not.

Caleb loves going to water the plants and dig in the empty part of our garden every day. Even if we're only there for a little while.