January in our warm Florida Garden!

January has been really warm again this year. Warm, and wet here in Central Florida!  We are still getting mosquitoes and sunflowers in our backyard!

When we do get a touch of cold, the winter veggies love it.  Our collards, bok choy, cauliflower, and broccoli have done well despite the warmer season.

We have volunteer tomatoes growing up our sunflowers. I think they are going to be cherry tomatoes. Yum.

Our moringa tree is getting almost as tall as the banana trees. I am planning on re-potting it soon.

Our little gardeners have a renewed interest in our gardening efforts this month. Both girls have been awesome little worker bees!  They are planting seeds, growing flowers, and helping us lay new edging and improving our soil for spring.

One lone orange is left on our tree, but I am super excited that my lemon tree is in bloom for the first time!

Winter is my favorite time to garden in Florida. Warm afternoons, cool nights, and delicious veggies, what is not to love?!  We’ve had a dozen fires in our backyard fire pit this month. We also have been ordering seeds and preparing things for spring. Yes, I am in love with January gardening in our sunshine state!

The next blog post is a book review on an interactive children’s gardening book, and then I promise to update about the school garden.  The children have been busy getting ready for spring!

Happy Gardening, Bee

A Salad Party!

School Garden Update

The students were so excited to harvest the first of their lettuce crop!

The class decided to throw a “salad party” to celebrate.  A few parents brought in salad dressings, bowls, utensils, and bread.  I even made some cucumber infused water and called it “garden water.”

I am happy to report every one of the students tried the lettuce (but not all liked it).   They were really excited to have their principal come by to have a bowl of their lettuce with them!

We thought our first attempt at gardening was a great success.  I had eighteen 5-7 year olds excited about growing vegetables!  They learned about different soils, measured rainwater, and even learned to remove snails eating in their garden beds.

Now the debate begins about what to do with the remaining 12 heads of romaine lettuce growing in the garden.  I hope the children will share it with other classes in their building!  Everyone has been watching our little garden grow!

School Gardening Project

I was blessed with the opportunity to head up a gardening project with a Kindergarten / First Grade class at a local elementary school this fall.  I kept notes to share on the blog, to hopefully encourage other parents and volunteers to organize a garden project at their own school!  It was so easy, and it has been amazing to share the garden with the students!

This project has cost about $200, and is currently two months old.  Mostly the cost has been the wood, hardware and dirt. I was able to get some project materials donated by businesses in our community.  The parents of the children in the class donated a large portion of the gardening soil, and my husband and I purchased and made the garden boxes for the school.

Gardening Supply List:

Wood 10″ wide, cut into four 5 ft and four 3 ft pieces

Stainless steel hardware

20 cubic yards of organic gardening soil (10 for each box)

Peat moss (we needed about 3 cu ft)

1 schoolroom watering can

Lettuce sprouts (donated by Full Moon Natives)

Organic Radish & Carrot Seeds

Flower Seeds (Zinnia & Marigold so far)

Kids Aprons (donated by our local Home Depot)

2 old tires (donated by a parent who needed new tires for her van)

1 Rain Gauge

1 Do Not Disturb gardening sign & stake

17 energetic kids

First we met with the school’s principal, to get approval and listen to his concerns about the project.  We promised to weave the garden activities into their classroom curriculum and got the final approval for our year long project.

Next, we constructed two 5″ x 3″ wood garden boxes, and then filled them with peat moss and gardening soil. The kids enjoyed feeling the difference in the peat moss and the gardening soil.

The kids are currently growing a salad garden, since lettuce, carrots, and radishes have a shorter growing season.  We have a goal to harvest our winter garden by the holiday break in mid December.  In the spring, they will plant native milkweed and learn about our endangered monarch butterflies.  They will also continued to grow different selections of vegetables throughout the rest of the school year.

The students will learn to use the garden’s rain gauge.  It is a plastic gauge with magnified numbers found at our Home Depot for about $5.  We will record rainfall measurements and discuss the occasional lack of rainfall.  I secured the rain gauge to the side of the garden box with a stainless steel screw, so that the students can not pick it up and play with it.

Last week we added unwanted tires to the garden space. We painted them the school color and filled them with soil and previously sprouted zinnia seeds!  The kids were really excited about their tires.

Our class teacher came up with the “Gardening Teams” idea.  Each morning, I spend about 15 mins with a small group of children.  They get one on one interaction in the garden, while we are taking care of it each week.  Gardening Team 1 is on Mondays, Gardening Team 2 is on Tuesdays, and so forth.  I enjoy answering their silly questions and listening to their interesting stories.

Our romaine lettuce is looking great!  I am hoping that not only will the kids eat it, but also share it with teachers and staff at their school.

I will update as this gardening project continues.  I am so excited to help teach food education to our youth!

Happy Gardening, Bee

 

 

 

Connecting Kids to their Food: Vero Beach Farms – Indian River County

“On average, U.S. students get less than four hours of food education per year. Millions of kids aren’t learning about the importance of fresh, nutritious food at home or at school, making it almost impossible for them to be healthy adults. ” ~Food Tank

 

One of my passions is teaching children about the food we eat.  Check out our most recent field trip to visit two Florida farms! The kids loved collecting the eggs right from the hen’s coop, as well as seeing the fish swimming in the hydroponic gardens!

Children learn through experience.  Be sure to look for ways in your own communities to strengthen your children’s relationship with the food they eat! And if you are lucky enough to visit or live in the Indian River County area, please stop by and visit these fantastic farms:

 

White Rabbit Organic Farms & CSA

Osceola Organic Farm

Happy Gardening, ~Bee

Hello Blog! Hello Summer Garden!

Wow, time flies! We haven’t written since spring!  We have been enjoying the summer and all the season brings to our Florida backyard! Sunflowers, tomatoes, and elderberries have been the highlight of our gardening efforts. Florida’s beaches, state parks, and local farms have been our sources for summer entertainment.

We purchased a new blender, and have been exploring the world of green smoothies.  My little gardeners delivered a few salad baskets to loved ones, and we are anxiously awaiting our first harvest of pineapples!

 

But the best thing I have to report since I last blogged… is my husband and sweet girls gave me a lemon tree for Mother’s Day!

 

 

 Happy Gardening, Bee

Florida Nature App for Kids: mom reviewed

Nature Viewing Along the Great Florida Birding and Wildlife Trail,

by Natural Guides, LLC  439MB

This is a great family app we discovered for the backyard.  Designed with non-experts in mind, this is great for my little gardeners. They can search for and identify flowering plants, butterflies, and birds found in sunny Florida. There is also a nice section on Florida’s unique habitats and state parks.

The app uses child friendly icons and images to identify flowers, butterflies and birds by color, size and appearance.  You can even select the seasons to narrow your searches.  My seven year old says her favorite thing she has identified is a male Red-cockaded Woodpecker. Mom’s favorite thing is how independently they can use the app and still come up with proper identifications.

Nature Viewing App is supported by:
Florida Museum of Natural History
Florida Wildflower Foundation
Florida Fish & Wildlife Conservation Commission
to name a few.

Hope you are enjoying your own backyard this summer!

~Bee

Our Orange Themed Backyard Brunch!

To celebrate summer this year, my little gardeners threw a summer brunch for a few of their friends!  Today I wanted to share with you what nine kids did in our backyard!! First we decided what to do…

“Orange you Glad It’s Summer?!” Themed Brunch

Menu:

Yogurt Bar (different types of yogurt & toppings like granola, raisins, etc)

Fruit Kabobs

Homemade Blueberry Muffins

Homemade Lemon Cookies

Fresh Squeezed Orange Juice, Water & Tea

Activities:

Paint with Oranges

Pick Orange Carrots in the garden

Goodie Bags

 

Prep work

First we cut and dried oranges in the oven. The kids will use them to stamp orange paint on an art canvas.

   

We made goodie bags (and tested our orange paint stamping idea). I purchased white paper bags and stamped them with an orange half covered in paint. We filled them with a few goodies: orange water gun, orange pencil & eraser, mango applesauce, Annie’s fruit snacks, a sun craft, and a YummyEarth lollipop. 🙂

 

The Party

Guest arrived in the morning… they ate & squeezed their own OJ.

  

We made orange prints in the backyard!

 

Loved how different each turned out. 🙂

One family went home and embellished their project a little more! So cute!

Before we washed up from the paint, we headed over to the garden to pick carrots. A few of the children had never seen carrots pulled from the ground.

It was a really fun morning!  We will have a garden update next week!

Happy Summer, Bee

Grandma’s Coastal Garden!

We spent Memorial Day weekend traveling from Florida’s populated East Coast to it’s remote West Coast. Horseshoe Beach located in Florida’s Big Bend area is where my parents decided to retire. The last census reported a population of 224 residents, two of which are my father and mother.  My dad has been enjoying commercial fishing in his “retirement”, and after taking several years off from gardening, my mom (Mimi) is back at it!

The little gardeners really enjoyed exploring Mimi’s garden.  Mimi used some extra crab traps as a trellis for her cucumbers. The only problem, one of the cucumber grew within the traps and we had to very carefully remove.  😉

The littlest gardener especially enjoyed the “big” corn! I have never attempted it, but Mimi’s was looking great!

 

The beans, tomatoes, peppers, and peas all looked delicious!

My mom in her garden…

The pole beans the little gardeners harvested to go with our fresh caught fish dinner!

It was a wonderful weekend for family, fresh food, and laughter!

 

We are blessed to have spent this time together!

~Bee

Crafting with Kids: Bird Feeders from TP rolls

Simple Bird Feeder from Toilet Paper Rolls

What you need:

Toilet paper rolls, peanut butter, bird seed, and string or ribbon.

What to do:

Spread the peanut butter on the toilet paper rolls.

Roll the toilet paper rolls in bird seed.

Tie together with string or ribbon (We used jute).

We hung our bird feeder on the magnolia tree in the back yard. We are planning on bird watching in the morning before breakfast.

 

Even the dog liked our recycled feeder! 😉

Hello April!

April is an awesome time to garden in Florida.  The weather is great… warm and sunny with a breeze.  April is typically before rainy season begins here so the bugs and humidity are at a minimal.  The only advice I can think to give this month would be since the weather is so nice, dry, and breezy… keep an eye on your watering.  I have to had to lightly water almost every other day this month.

The saliva is blooming in the garden right now! Salivas also known as sages have a long flower blooming period.  They attract bees, hummingbirds, and butterflies to our garden.

 The little gardeners have really enjoyed picking cherry tomatoes in the garden.

Lots of onions have been ready for harvest this month. The girls think they take too long to grow. 😉

The rest of the month we are working on a new butterfly garden in the front yard! We started native milkweed from seeds a few months ago, but they are slow to grow this season.  We purchased scarlet milkweed, native lantana (below), and a purple variety of lantana this week.  We have several other native wildflowers and plants to add to our new butterfly santuary… once it is dug up!  There is a lot of St. Augustine grass to be removed first, so we’re pulling Dad in on this spring project!

I will take before and after pictures!

Hope you all are enjoying April, whatever your weather may be like!