With the temperatures rising and the sunshine finally warming the earth this Spring, our family is once again engaged in starting a vegetable garden. This year we took a different approach to our garden—recycle and reuse. We had a variety of seeds leftover from last summer and I saved their packets and tucked them away with our gardening tools in the shed. At Halloween, my 8-year-old-son kept several pumpkin seeds from his Jack-o-Lantern and allowed them to air dry before saving them in a plastic baggie. For our seedling containers, I saved milk jugs, yogurt containers and cookie trays and created dividers out of the excess plastic. Drain holes were then cut in the bottom of the containers with kitchen scissors. With a little bit of potting soil, the seeds had the perfect space to begin their growth.
Another item we will reuse for our garden is the chicken wire fencing we put up around the garden last year, as my husband rolled it up and stored it before the first snow. By fencing the perimeter of the garden, it will keep pesky rabbits and our dog out of the young plants. Recycled newsprint will line the garden floor to help keeps weeds under control. Wire tomato cages are also good to reuse year after year.
Our “greenhouse” is a combination of our front porch, which faces the southern sun, and our front living room for when the containers need to be brought in and protected from a thunderstorm. My children check on the seedlings each day and have learned when they need to be watered. It is very gratifying to see the first shoots emerge out of the soil.
New growing endeavors for this year include strawberries in pots, a blueberry bush and a thornless blackberry bush. We purchased these already well-established plants at a garden center, along with a bag of garden-blend potting soil. To better ensure we were properly caring for these new additions to our gardening scheme, I consulted with my cousin Cory and my Aunt Chris, who both have very “green thumbs.” They suggested putting a bit of fencing around the new plants as well as covering the top with lightweight netting to let the sunlight and rain through but not berry-hungry birds. My 6-year-old daughter is very excited about “going out in the backyard and picking her own berries right off the bush.” I gently remind her that I’m not sure if our fruit garden will be bountiful, but with everything in gardening, it is worth a try.
My Great-Grandpa Sonny used to say that you should put a garden in right after Mother’s Day as the soil has adequately warmed and the cold is no longer a threat. As Mother’s Day is now a few days behind us, it is the perfect time to say Happy Gardening!
Springfield Moms contributor Sarah Chandler is a Springfield native, wife to Jeff, and mom to Levi and Anne. She loves to be outdoors during all seasons and enjoys relaxing indoors by creating quilts and scrapbooking.
