Kindergardens!

The Inadvertent Farmer is sponsoring another year of Kindergardens! The basic premise is to encourage youth to get in the garden, be it planning, planting, watering, weeding, harvesting or eating. :-D We do a lot of those things, and Rowen loves to be involved with all of it.

He's 2 now, and helps more and more every day. He's slowly learning how to stay on the path. He's a pro at watering. And loves helping to move piles of things into other piles of things. Sometimes those piles of things are of the same type, sometimes not. :-D

The other member of our family is my hubby Dave. He likes the food that comes out of the garden, but isn't as heavily involved in the day-to-day operations. Partly because I like it so much, and he knows it's my stress relief , as well as something I really enjoy doing with Rowen. He does heroically take over when I'm out of town for work travel. That always happens at least once a summer, if not more, so he keeps up to date with what's going in and what's coming out and always does a great job of stepping up to help out.

This will be my 9th year gardening my own plots, so I consider myself fairly knowledgeable about what's going on and what to expect. I love helping other gardeners, so if you're new here or new to the garden thing, feel free to hit me up for advice. I am in zone 4, so my knowledge does tend to lean towards short season problems and tricks, and I know less about heat/drought problems. But, some advice is universal.

This year we'll be gardening the main plot in the front yard. It's roughly 8 feet x 16 feet I think. We also have small gardens on the South and East sides of the house, and one on the South side of the shed. The smaller gardens have more of the flowers and perennials in them. I also keep a multitude of containers in production. Flowers, herbs, greens, veggies, whatever strikes my fancy and has a root system amiable to the container size I have available.

We don't have much that's specifically for Rowen to garden, he has a few pots that he can play with, and some tools, but usually he just helps with whatever I'm doing. He loves to help hoe and loves to steal my spade. :-D Mommy's tools are always cooler than his tools.

Join us for this year's Kindergarden blogroll. If nothing else you can get a weekly dose of cute kids outside.