{Tuesday Tip} Happy Harvesting

One of my favorite things about summer is being able to harvest fresh produce from the garden!

Early in the spring we posted about gardening and how gardens not only promote good well-being and health, but they are also a great way to create family bonding time. 

This is my first year gardening in my own backyard and it has been a bit of an adventure.  Our garden is far from perfect.  Our soil is mostly hard clay and super rocky.  Plus we almost planted (or transplanted) too late in the spring.  But miraculously, despite these odds, our garden has started to produce, and it's fabulous!

This year we were able to plant a few onions,

squash and zucchini,

peas, tomatoes, bell peppers, 2 cucumber plants, and 1 bean plant (that's all that survived).  We also planted a few marigolds along the front (they seem like a traditional garden flower) and we were lucky enough to inherit a raspberry bush from the previous owners. 

We haven't harvested everything, and we have yet to find out if all of our plants will continue growing and producing.  But so far we have harvested lots of squash and zucchini plus some cheery tomatoes, peas, and...

 raspberries (my favorite!).

Even if we don't yield as much as we anticipated, harvesting is still so rewarding because you have a great feeling of accomplishment AND you get to enjoy the fruits of your labors, literally! Yum!

Even if you don't have your own garden, you may know friends or neighbors that are willing to share their abundant produce with you.  Or you can always stop by the local gardeners market.  

A couple other fun ways to create the "harvesting" feel for you and your family is to find a local farm that allows you to pick your own fresh produce before you buy it, like this local U-Pick farm.  It's a great way to get the kids involved, and is way more yummy than buying produce from the grocery store!

Another way to get your fresh produce is to find out about local co-ops in your area.  One great website is Bountiful Baskets.  This organization is largely volunteer-based and seems to keep growing and adding new locations.

Whichever way you get your fresh produce, we wish you a Happy Harvest!

{Tuesday's Tip} Fun in the Yard

To along with our earth week theme, I wanted to share another great way to bond as a family: gardening! 

Working out in the yard together can be both work and play.  For instance, try planting a garden together.  It's so fun to watch something you planted grow and then reap the benefits too!  Plus, we all know that home grown is always so much tastier than store bought.

 
You don't even need to have a big yard or a lot of space to plant a garden, you can use pots or other raised garden beds.  Also, not far from where we live there are community garden plots that you can rent for spring and summer, and they are pretty inexpensive considering how much produce you can harvest later in the season!  It's worth checking out to see if your community has a garden or garden plots too.

Here's how you can get the whole family involved in your garden.  First, get everyone involved from the beginning.  When your planning your garden, let each person pick something they would like to grow.  Pumpkins, zucchini, and large sun flowers are a few fun plants our family likes to grow.  Other plants that are really fun to harvest are cherry tomatoes, carrots, peas, strawberries, etc.  because you can simply pick the fruit or veggie, rinse, and eat!  No prep!

*This could also be a cool science project for kids to plant a small seed and watch it grow.  They can also simultaneously learn responsibility as they take care of their plants to water, and weed them.

The most exciting part of gardening when the plants start producing!

*Or, instead of a vegetable garden, you could plan a flower garden.  It's also fun to see the beautiful flowers altogether or experiment with new varieties like those that attract butterflies or humming birds.  It makes for a very relaxing atmosphere to have a little bit of nature in your very own yard.

Of course there are lots of our things for kids to discover and learn about as they are helping out in the yard.  For instance, if you can convince your kids to help you weed, they could discover all kinds of cool little bugs hiding near the plants.  What kid can't resist looking at snails, rolly pollies, or worms!  It is fun to learn about insects.  In the past when we've found caterpillars, we'll look it up on the internet to find out what it will look like when it turns into a butterfly.  It can be a great learning opportunity for both you and your kids.  You can easily look up some quick info about praying mantis, ants, butterflies, spiders or any other bugs your child finds or really likes.

Working in the yard and discovering bugs is also a good time to teach children respect for nature and other living things.  As adults, it's good advice to not over react when we find less than pleasant creepy crawlys outside like, try not to scream, act scared, hurt or squish the bugs.  They are there for a reason and, for the most part, are more good than bad.  For instance, many people don't like spiders (my sister included).  But spiders help eat other bad insects from killing our plants, so they are actually great for our gardens. 

There is so much fun you can have outside in the garden. Enjoy it together!

Dirt Cup Dessert

We are still celebrating earth week here at our house.  To help us celebrate I planned a special dessert for our dinner tonight. 

We don't have dessert very often at our house. So when we do, its a BIG deal!

To set the mood for dinner, I had the kids help me decorate the table.  A few simple decorations can really make a HUGE difference in the atmosphere in your home or at dinner time.  Pretty soon everyone is happy and excited because things are different and therefore more "special."  All I did to set the mood was display a couple packs of flowers I bought for our garden and then added some gummy worms (that's where the helpers came in handy). The gummy worms were not just for decoration, however, they were part of our dessert later.

For dessert we made dirt cups with worms (sounds yummy, right!).  There are lots of variations on this dessert out there, but here is how I did it.  I used chocolate ice cream for the bottom layer then crushed cookies and sprinkled them on top to look like dirt on the ground. We used Oreo cookies but you can choose any kind of cookie, really.  Then we added a few more gummy worms to look like they were digging in the "dirt." 

To make it more fun for everyone, I had some help crushing the cookies.  Before dinner started, I gave everyone a small baggie with cookies.  I recommend using ziplock bags, but sandwich bags would work too if you're not too messy.  I gave everyone about 3 cookies.  Then while we waited for everyone to gather around the dinner table, we crushed our own bag of cookies.  We just set our crushed cookies aside until dinner was finished.

When we finished our meal, I scooped the ice cream and everyone added their cookies on top and grabbed some gummy worms. (The gummy worms were already cleverly placed on the table, remember?)  Then our dessert was ready to eat. Yum! I must say, that was some of the best dirt I've ever had! :)

Afterwards we had time to go out in the garden and plant the flowers I bought.  I love marigolds, they look so perky in my yard!

Celebrate Earth Day

Tomorrow is Earth Day!

During the next week we are dedicating our posts to help celebrate Earth Day.  It will help provide fun times for the family!

We have been blessed with beautiful nature all around us and we need to take good care of it and add to the beauty.  The first place to start is in your very own home.

Tomorrow I am going to leave a flower in each family members bedroom (including my husband).

I'm going to include this cute note that says:

I have the power

with this flower

to shower 
you with love!

{click here to print your flower power love note}

Later in the day we will go outside and plant them together.

 How do you plan to celebrate Earth Day?