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Gardening for Toddlers

Your toddler will find lots of things to explore in the garden, and if you are prepared with a few toddler gardening activities, you can enhance his or her experience. Gardening with toddlers is a healthy way for parents and children to enjoy the outdoors together.

Theme Gardens for toddlers should center on their five senses. Choose textured plants that they can feel and sensitive plants that snap shut when touched. Fragrant herbs appeal to a child’s sense of taste and smell. Honeysuckle is very fragrant, and if you catch the flowers at just the right time, you can squeeze a drop of sweet nectar onto the child’s tongue. There is no end to the variety of bright-colored flowers that are a delight to look at, and toddlers enjoy them even more if they can pick a few to enjoy indoors. Ornamental grasses that rustle in the breeze are plants that toddlers can hear. Consider toddler garden design ideas that involve several aspects of nature. Ladybugs and butterflies are a delight to little ones.

Creating the garden with your little one…

Let your child dig and scratch in the garden with small plastic garden tools. Large kitchen spoons and measuring cups make great toddler tools. Talk to your toddler about earthworms as “garden helpers.” Little ones that like to get dirty will enjoy digging for worms. Place a worm in his or her hand to hold for a few minutes. Let your toddler move small ornaments, such as pinwheels, around the garden. Help your toddler pick flowers and place them in a vase of water. Let him or her help add water to the vase as necessary. Show your toddler how to water the garden with a small, plastic watering can.

This can be a fun and learning lesson throughout the spring, summer, & fall

Pothos propagation

This method of pothos propagation is super easy – all you need is some time and glasses of water!

What you will need:

Sharp scissors or an x-acto knife

Glasses full of water to hold cuttings

Pot for planting

Indoor or all-purpose potting soil for planting

Decide how long you’d like the vines to be and trim them directly below the lowest leaf node you want to leave. Untangle the vines and lay them out individually to get ready to make some cuttings!

Cut along the stem to create individual leaf cuttings. Cut to the left and right of every leaf stem, leaving a small piece of vine attached to the bottom of the leaf stem. See the little brown bumps on the vine? Those are called nodes, and that’s where new roots will form.

Fill your container(s) with water and place the cuttings into the water so the cut ends remain submerged.

Place the cuttings in a warm, bright spot and leave them to grow roots. Check on the cuttings every couple of days and dump out the old water and replace it with new. (Oxygen dissolves in standing water after a time, so it’s important to refresh!

Leave pothos cuttings in water until they have at least one inch of roots. In this case, I ended up with much longer ones waiting for more of the cuttings to root, so the roots are between two and three inches. Keep in mind that the longer the roots remain in water, the harder it will be for them to make the change to soil.

Fill a pot about 2/3 full with fresh potting soil and start placing the cuttings around the edges of the pot, adding soil as necessary to keep the cuttings in the right place. Then fill in the middle of the pot with cuttings and add more soil as needed and water slowly and thoroughly until soil is wet.

While pothos do well in a variety of light conditions and can even tolerate low light, moderate indoor light is ideal. Outdoors they can be grown in shade to partial shade. Wherever you decide to display your pothos, just be sure to avoid direct sunlight.

Stovetop Potpourri

Create a perfect natural homemade scent that will bring the smell of spring into your home.

A stovetop potpourri is a mix of edible ingredients that you simmer away on your stove for hours. You just need to replenish the water as it cooks down. It’s cheaper and natural alternative way than store bought potpourri.

This simple DIY project will make your entire home smell fresh, plus if your home is dry simmering pots will also help you add moisture to the air.

Try this blend of ingredients: Lemon, cinnamon, mint, & thyme

This homemade scent is spicy and warm, but fresh to create the perfect aroma to help you transition from winter to spring.

Cut lemon into slices, use a handful of fresh mint, fresh thyme, and 2 cinnamon sticks, place all ingredients into a pot and fill water and simmer.

Planting a Recipe Garden

Start a small little garden this year in your backyard or even in containers on the patio!

Think about planting a Recipe Garden, which you can grow all the ingredients at your doorstep.

Grow all the ingredients (or as many as you can) to make a favorite recipe — or plan to give that recipe a new twist with your garden bounty, such as using chopped chard in your taco instead of lettuce!

Here is a few plant garden ideas to start this season….

Pizza Garden: Tomatoes, basil, oregano, peppers and onions.

Salad Garden: Lettuce, carrots, radishes, tomatoes and cucumbers.

Salsa Garden: Tomatoes, garlic, cilantro and peppers.

Taco Garden: Chard, tomatoes, cilantro, hot peppers, onions.

Smoothie Garden: Kale, strawberries, blueberries, mint.

Pickle Garden: Cucumbers (“pickling” varieties are best), carrots, beets. (You can pickle just about any vegetable.)

Grow Your Own Salad (indoors): look below to see a fun recipe!

Plant a Snack Garden

Grow fruits and vegetables that are easy for kids to harvest, wash and eat without any preparation — cherry tomatoes, sugar snap peas, mini carrots, cucumbers and more. You’ll be encouraging kids to enjoy these healthy substitutes for fat- and sugar-laden chips, candy and cookies.

Or you could design a little Edible Landscape

Edible landscaping describes the horticultural practice of incorporating plants with edible parts (fruits, flowers, stems, leaves or roots) into a design whose primary function is to be aesthetically pleasing. The tasty and nutritious harvest of the landscape is an exciting secondary benefit. The design may feature only edible plants or include a combination of edible and non-edible, ornamental plants.

This easy low carb chopped cucumber garden salad is great with summer vegetables. Just chop, mix and enjoy

Ingredients

1 cup cucumbers, chopped

1/2 cup tomatoes, chopped

1/4 red onion, chopped

1/4 cup sweet bell pepper, chopped

2 tablespoons fresh mint, minced

Growing strawberries in containers

Strawberries make ideal container fruits given their compact and quick-growing habit, although they are equally at home within a keen bed. Hanging baskets, terracotta pots and special strawberry planters are just some of the containers to grow them in, though for rustic effect I prefer old wooden wine or vegetable crates. There are a number of distinct advantages to growing strawberries in tubs of any kind. Plants can be moved to track the sun, thereby enjoying more warmth and light than they might otherwise. They can be lifted off the ground to avoid the interest of slugs and dodge soil-borne diseases. And plants can be moved under cover in winter to force an extra-early crop.

Planting Strawberries in Containers

Late spring into early summer is the right time of year to plant bare-root runners that have been cold-stored to hold them back. Brought out of the cold and sold on, they will get away very quickly indeed to give a pick of fruits in as little as two months. Alternatively, you can plant regular pot-sold strawberries which should also bear fruit in the same summer.

Set plants into multipurpose potting soil, spacing them 25-30cm (10-12in) apart – this is closer than they would be in the ground as it will be easier to water and feed them. Bare-root runners can look quite severe with their minimal top growth and often less-than-plump roots. This is normal, so worry not! Give the runners a soak in a bucket of water to revive them or water pots of strawberries if they are at all dry.

Caring for Strawberries in Containers

Adding compost should be helpful and needs to be kept moist by watering whenever the soil dries out. When watering, try to keep moisture off the leaves to prevent fungal diseases getting a hold and spoiling the fruits. If you can, carefully lift the leaves to apply the water to your sunken pots. Your plants will also appreciate regular feeding with a high-potash liquid feed as soon as the first flowers appear – a brand sold for feeding tomato plants will work just fine for this purpose.

Keep your container of strawberries in a sunny part of the garden, patio or terrace in order to encourage young fruits to swell and ripen. Developing strawberries can be kept clean of compost by tucking in wood chips or straw beneath the fruits to lift them clear. Drape netting over the tubs if birds start to nab your fruits.

After fruiting is over foliage can be cut back to leave just the central, young leaves intact. Runners should be removed, unless you want to propagate new plants, to ensure plants bulk out again before winter. If you have never grown strawberries before then housing them in containers is a great way to start. It’s an almost fool-proof option and the rewards are indescribably sweet! Plant, water, feed and enjoy!