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| Jasper admires a radish. |
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| Radish flowers. |
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| Tomato flowers. |
We made a couple of
raised beds last year as a homeschool project, and have really enjoyed them. It's lovely to be able to pick your own food right from your garden, and truly amazing to see a child get really excited about watching things grow. We have limited space, so we have had to choose carefully what to plant. Last year, we learned that broccoli and brussels sprouts have really large leaves that shade everything around them, so that we were unable to grow the smaller plants which ended up in their shadows. We were also surprised to finally realize that broccoli tops are called florets because they literally are the flower buds of the plant! I felt silly that this had never occurred to me. (The florets turned out to be really tasty, even when they were starting to bloom.) And growing broccoli turned out to have a really positive effect on Jasper that I never would have predicted. By watching it grow, my notoriously picky eater decided that broccoli wasn't too weird and would actually eat it! It really does help kids to want to eat things when they genuinely know what they are.
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| Pea flowers. |
After going to a book signing for
The Secret World of Slugs and Snails: Life in the Very Slow Lane
, we learned that watering in the late evening may help conserve water, but it also attracts slugs by the score. In the Pacific Northwest, we don't need any help attracting slugs, thank you very much! I've been watering in the mornings instead and the slugs have been many, many fewer this year.
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| Poppy. |
This year, I took my sister's advice and planted radishes, because they are really fast growing and really fun for kids to pick. I had no idea radishes could grow so tall, that the flowers would attract hummingbirds, or that the prickly leaves would prove to be delicious food for our pet crawdads and bullfrog tadpoles. I also planted spinach, which has also sustained us as well as our pets. As I took pictures in our garden, a hummingbird dove at me, hoping to drive me away from its favorite radish flowers. I have tried to grow artichokes in New England (which didn't work too well...) but here they thrive! We may let one of them finish blooming just so that Jasper can see its thistley purple bloom. I planted peas, which have flowered and filled the garden with a divine perfume. I suspect now that they are beginning to go to seed, that they may have been mislabeled as shelling peas and are instead sweet peas cultivated for their flowers. But they have been so pleasant that I forgive them. I also planted just a few poppies, which have really thrilled Jasper with their gossamer petals popping open unexpectedly. Our herbs are grown separately in pots, and our mild climate has allowed most of them to surprise me by coming back with vigor this year. And every day we watch the green tomatoes carefully, looking for signs of color.
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| Thinning the carrots. |
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| Another poppy. |
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| Our first artichoke. |
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| The hummingbird whose territory now includes our radish flowers. |
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