Before I start this post I want to thank Barn Light Electric for featuring our children's new study on their blog here!
Thank you!
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It's been a while since I've featured a "what we've learned" post, but I thought you might enjoy learning from my family's experience of creating our kitchen garden.
So here is what we've learned so far...
1. This is our first pumpkin. It's tiny, but we love him! Unfortunately our snails love the pumpkins as much as we do.
Fortunately we discovered that snails hate cinnamon oil, which is the main ingredient in all natural Snail and Slug Away.
Because we have three wonderful children, and two adorable pups, I need to make sure that all of the products we use are safe and non-toxic.
That way, I can feel comfortable with Leila helping out too!
We've also planted some pumpkins in pots. The snails have a difficult time crawling up those tall pot walls...
2. Some of my veggies weren't looking so happy, so I gave them HB-101 to give them a little jump start. HB-101 is a growth nutrient for plants derived from a blend of cedar, pine, and plantain extracts.
HB-101 is why our pole beans look so healthy...
We fed our peppers HB-101 too!
Once we jump started our plants, we fed them Green Light Super Bloom,
Green Light helps the plants grow flowers like these, which become...
eggplants...
tomatoes...
purple bell peppers...
and persian cucumbers... If you can't find Green Light, Peters is great too!
3. There are some plants that you don't want to grow flowers. For example, basil gets bitter if you allow it to grow flowers.
Snip the tops off your basil before it blooms!
4. We had a wonderful time harvesting our corn!
Even my almost 17 year old son, Charlie was amazed that we grew this! What did we learn? Although we just planted our second harvest of corn, we made the mistake of planting it in the same place. Even us kitchen gardeners need to rotate our crops!
5. Do you see that magnificent bundle of mint growing under our tomatoes? It looks happy, doesn't it?
Well apparently mint is a very aggressive plant and will take over your (our!) entire bed with these huge roots.
Learn from us! Plant mint and spearmint in pots.
We pulled up both mounds of mint and planted them in their own containers...
which look great under our Kumquat trees.
6. Next lesson: rather than pulling a whole head of lettuce, just tear off a few leaves and let the plant continue to grow!
7. Beets are yummy!
But plant them in cooler temperatures or their green tops will grow larger than the tiny beet!
We've had a fantastic time harvesting our crops each week.
8. Kitchen Gardens are incredibly forgiving and ever changing. We are looking forward to learning about broccoli!
9. We've just planted our new Pink Lemonade Dwarf Tree, which requires its own citrus fertilizer!
10. We also planted a new Dwarf Avocado Tree. We just learned that even a dwarf avocado can grow to be 20 feet tall. Who knew?
And who do we have to thank for all of this new found knowledge? Our Kitchen Garden Creator, Pam Rownak! Pam visits our garden a couple of times a month to teach us city folk all about growing food. Since I'm a kinetic learner (meaning I learn by doing), Pam's lessons have been invaluable!
I hope you've learned a bit about kitchen gardening from our experience.
I'd love you to share what you've learned too!
xo
Brooke
If you would like help creating the home of your dreams, email me about our design services.
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