Kids Grow Greener

The picture below shows a growing tendril from a sugar snap pea borrowing the strength of another object to hold itself up as it grows.

Although the picture is fascinating, and the plant is wrapping around a stake, the wrapped around object might not find the moment so tender if it's another living plant.....

 SPEAKING OF STAKING...

You don't have to buy fancy stakes for your pea or bean plants. In this and other pictures, you will notice that we have used dead twigs and branches to support the growing plants.  Fencing or trellises are also good. Whatever works is fine!

Update on Friday, June 26, 2009 at 7:59PM by Kids Grow Greener

...and their tender, juicy pods. Incredibly, they really are crispy and sugary. They are a little slow coming this wet season, and in slug- and woodchuck-prone gardens they have not survived those hungry beasts. But what a treat they are!

I will be re-sowing some seeds, now that my garden beds are (hopefully!) well protected against the Marauding Marmotas*. If the weather stays this way, with cool temperatures and record amounts of rain here in the Hudson Valley, maybe we'll have a midsummer crop of Sugar Snap Peas.

 

*(that's Marmota Monax, Latin name for the adorable but greedy groundhog/woodchuck/whistle pig)

Slugs can be a real pest in your garden.  "Gumballs" are prickly little balls from Sweet Gum trees, which are found in the Lower Hudson Valley and elsewhere, and shed their gumballs in early June. They are shown below surrounding a spinach plant's stems, one recommended way of coping with them, which may or may not keep the slugs away....

In this case, as you can see below, the gumballs worked well with Swiss chard and escarole, but much less so with spinach (which you see from two angles, above and below).

Update on Friday, June 26, 2009 at 8:06PM by Kids Grow Greener

Weeeelllll....the gumball experiment seems not to have worked in the home garden, or only worked slightly. Next experiment: using copper strips embedded into the soil around plants.  For the latest on what to do---and NOT to do---in this particular battle, see the BBC article on the Gardening Links page, or link here:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A2876862

We'll discuss tool safety soon, but in case you're wondering how to make sure the food you grow is safe from contamination, here is a great link:

Here's a link to a site ("For Small Hands") where you can buy a wide variety of child-sized gardening tools, books, clothing, gloves and many other items of interest to organic gardening families.

Here are some questions for kids to think about before starting a garden.......