How Does Your Garden Grow?

Not much has changed in my garden since the first garden update. We’ve had lots of rainy and cold weather. After Mother’s Day is usually when it is safe to start planting in my area. I did venture over to my Square Foot Garden today to see what would need to be done and found:

garlic chives? I swore I would not forget what herb I planted there—but I did. Anyone have an idea what it is?

Besides the mystery plant, it looks like I have a couple of onions growing that I missed pulling from last year. I can’t wait to start turning over the soil and getting things ready.

I am shocked that my seedlings are still doing well! This is my cucumber plant.  I didn’t start much indoors because I don’t have the space and I have little kids. I wanted my little ones to see that seeds turn into plants, but I wasn’t expecting many of the seedlings to survive their care :)  Oh, and my 2yr. old pulled out all the plant stakes. So I will have several more mystery plants in my garden! 🙂

Since I haven’t been able to do much gardening outdoors, I’ve been taking time over the last month to do garden-related activities with my younger children.  This week we used plant printables from The Montessori Print Shop (a wealth of quality printables there!) as a spring-board for our garden-themed activities.

First we did some seed observation. I had the girls try to guess what would grow from these seeds. We talked about how the seeds were all different from each other—different colors, shapes, and sizes.

Then we placed the seeds onto the correct cards. The girls had a hard time believing that these little seeds would grow into plants!

The Plants We Eat download contains several different ways to introduce children to the idea that the plants we eat fall into different categories. We talked about the different parts of a plant.

The plants were divided into six categories. For the first few times going over this concept, I will keep the categories together in strips for easier matching. My daughter first matched the categories like a puzzle. Then in the second activity, the control card was taken away and only the categories were listed. Later I plan on having my daughter complete her own chart (included in the Plants download).

We sorted fruits and roots. Then sorted between other categories too. I wanted to keep it simple at first and only have two category choices at a time.

I asked my 4yr. old to show me what was her favorite plant to eat. We love to eat asparagus drizzled with olive oil, sea salt, and parmesan cheese.

My 2yr. old told me her favorite plant to eat was a rutabaga. I’ve never even seen a rutabaga let alone tasted one. I know she hasn’t either—lol! I think that will be something I’ll have to pick up the next time I’m at the store. How do you cook a rutabaga? Do you eat it raw? See, I have no clue!

So that’s how my garden is growing—-so far!

My garden last year
Another view of my garden
My garden the first year
Easy Egg Garden (Homemade Chia-Pet)
Little Ones Learn About Plants

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Disclosure: I was given a free download from Montessori Print Shop for review purposes only. Opinions are my own. The way I used the cards are Montessori-influenced but not necessarily the official Montessori method.