The Old Schoolhouse - March 2012

Gardening

By Mary Ann Adams

Plant a Garden

in Your Homeschool

Children love to play in the dirt, and tending a vegetable garden gives them that free- dom while learning science, math, reading, and other skills that count toward “school time.” My daughters, aged 3 and 6, have played and learned in the garden from the time they stopped eating dirt. My 6-year-old understands which vegetables are seasonally available, saying, “We eat strawberries in the springtime and tomatoes in the summer.” She knows that carrots grow under the ground and that beans grow above the ground, knowledge many children lack when all of a family’s food comes from the grocery store. Gardening helps children understand God’s plan for creation.

If you want to plant a garden for your homeschool, but have never gardened before, start with a small space; 10 square feet is enough room to grow several plants but small enough to be a pleasure to tend.

Folks without yards can garden in large

containers. Make sure to choose a spot that gets sun most of the day.

To start a new garden in existing sod, dig holes for the individual plants, mix in all-purpose organic fertilizer and compost, and cover the remaining sod among

Gardening helps children
understand God’s plan
for creation.

the plants with layers of newspaper (no shiny ad slicks) and compost. Put a layer of mulch, several inches thick, on top. ;e sod will eventually decompose and enrich the soil. Alternatively, dig up the sod from the entire area, shake the soil from the roots of the plants before composting them, mix in fertilizer and compost, and smooth the soil surface with a rake. Fill containers with a commercially available potting mix, not topsoil, to make sure the plants have adequate nutrients.

Depending on your geographical location, you will plant vegetables at di;erent times. Most gardening books say to plant cool-weather-loving vegetables as soon as the soil can be worked, which means as soon as the ground thaws. I

live in South Carolina, where the ground is almost always workable because it rarely freezes. I plant cool-weather-loving vegetables about six weeks before our last frost, which occurs in early April, and expect to have their harvest completed in late May. I plant warm-weather-loving plants after the last expected frost, in early April. In late August, I plant the