The Goth Garden Begins!

And other kids in the garden projects!

J15 and I started on the Goth Garden this evening- well, actually, we started weeks ago purchasing seeds and starting little plants.

An old photo of some of the seeds.

Sorry about the glare.

So, there are a few more seeds to be started and some to direct sow but we got started on the physical space for the garden tonight. We're using the panels from an old storage shed that was left on the property as "mulch" to try to kill off the grass underneath. I don't have high hopes that this will work and I forsee ripping up lots of sod in the future.

Laying out panels to try to kill the grass

J15 poses with a panel.

We covered approximately a 12 by 12 foot area- even though she wants a bit bigger space. But I thought that would be good to start. I think this garden will be several years in the making. Much of it will be in perennials that will take a bit to get big. This is her garden space. I've finally found a way to get her interested in gardening by letting her plant black flowers. We had loads of fun together picking out seeds and I anticipate having fun working on this together.

A few of her little seedlings: Black columbine, scabiosa, and sweet william.

K10 isn't into flowers- he's into building things.

Here he is in front of his hut- built from scavenged blocks, bricks and wood.

Here are the he planted peas coming up

for his pea hut!

I tried to get out of him what he wanted in the garden. We will be building a bean tee-pee but mostly he was wanting to make sure we had planted carrots (yup- I12 planted them when we planted the early stuff). I12 really isn't my outside/gardening child- but he does like his veggies. He is my aspiring chef and it was fun last summer to take him out to the garden, harvest some veggies and then let him create. He made Ratatouille last year- it was fabulous! He is very meticulous and I think he planted the carrots a single seed at a time.

The Goth Garden, the pea hut and bean Tee-pee are our projects for the Kinder Garden Challenge. The pea hut and tee-pee are pretty easy projects. The Goth Garden is definitely a challenging project- and, like I said, probably a multi-year project. But, it should be fun. We're really trying to involve the children in all the projects here, inside and out. They are learning lots of new skills.