Growing My Garden

By Heather

As the days get longer and longer (thank goodness for those blackout shades or I’d never get my kids to bed!), we are spending more time outside. We have also started to plant our garden.

From a purely practical standpoint, installing a timed watering system was one of the best things we’ve done to keep the garden growing on our busy family’s schedule.

Here are a few tips to make gardening safer for the whole family:

For the little ones:

Think about hygiene. Make sure your child helpers wear gardening gloves and wash their hands well afterward.

For adults:

Think about your body. Knees can get sore with too much kneeling in the garden. Use knee pads or a rolled up towel. Also mind your level of exertion for back strain.

For everyone:

Think about sun protection. Wear sunscreen and a wide-brimmed gardening hat.

Think about chemicals. Whether you choose to go 100% organic like we did is a personal choice, but beware chemical pesticides around pets and children. Natural pest-eaters like ladybugs are fun as well as being garden helpers.

This video shows my small garden helpers working with the tiny insect garden helpers last year. It helps to release ladybugs in the cooler evening temperatures so they are most likely to hurry off to bed in your produce.