Watching Your Children’s Garden Grow

Written by Rondi Hillstrom Davis


Start some gardening traditions with your kids. Give them their own garden patch and a spot to dig. Children love getting their hands dirty and watching things grow.

Be sure to buy good quality, child sized gardening tools. Plastic toy versions just won’t hold up torepparttar task. You will also need children’s gloves and a watering can.

Mark offrepparttar 105427 garden area and turnrepparttar 105428 soil. Kids can help break up any lumps with their hands. Work in some organic compost.

Choose seeds that will grow quickly. Small children get impatient if their plants take too long to sprout. Radishes, Snapdragons, Cosmos, and Sunflowers will all germinate quickly. Carrots and strawberries are also easy to grow-- and yummy to eat.

Large seeds like beans and Morning Glories are easy for small fingers to push intorepparttar 105429 ground. You can start your seeds indoors in an eggshell carton. Whenrepparttar 105430 seedlings are an inch high, tear offrepparttar 105431 egg carton, and leavingrepparttar 105432 soil intact, transplantrepparttar 105433 seedlings outside.

Or, try placing beans on a wet paper towel inside a zip top bag. Taperepparttar 105434 bag to a sunny window and wait forrepparttar 105435 seeds to germinate. I can remember, as a child, checking my beans every morning before school. The first shoots appeared to my delight and we carefully transplantedrepparttar 105436 beans outdoors.

Make garden markers by painting small rocks. This will help kids keep track of their selections.

Make it fun! Grow a sunflower house by plantingrepparttar 105437 sunflowers in a circle with a space inrepparttar 105438 middle big enough for your kids to hide. Be sure to leave room for a door.

The Wild Spikenard

Written by J.A Carpunky


The Wild Spikenard also goes byrepparttar names of False Solomon's Seal, and Solomon's Zig-zag. Its scientific name is Smilacina racemosa. This plant has white or greenish colored, small, slightly fragrant, densely packed flowers. It grows one to three feet tall, and has a simple, slightly angled stem which tends to be leafy and sometimes has a little hair onrepparttar 105426 upper parts. The leaves of this lily are lance-shaped and grow from three to six inches long. They have a fine hairy growth onrepparttar 105427 under side.

This wild flower also sports batches of aromatic, round berries which tend to be pale red speckled in color. It likes to grow in moist woods, thickets, or hillsides andrepparttar 105428 flowers bloom from May to July. This one likesrepparttar 105429 southern regions ofrepparttar 105430 United States, from Georgia over to Arizona.

The False Solomon's Seal tends to grow close to true Solomon's Seal, so novice gardeners can confuserepparttar 105431 two. Butrepparttar 105432 feathery plume of greenish-white blossoms that crownsrepparttar 105433 false Solomon's Seal's somewhat zig-zagged stem is very different fromrepparttar 105434 small, greenish, bell-shaped flowers, usually nodding in pairs alongrepparttar 105435 stem, underrepparttar 105436 leaves, fromrepparttar 105437 axils ofrepparttar 105438 true Solomon's Seal. Later in summer, when hungry birds wander throughrepparttar 105439 woods with increased families,repparttar 105440 Wild Spikenard offers them branching clusters of pale red speckled berries, whereasrepparttar 105441 true Solomon's Seal plant gives them blue-black fruit to feast on.

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