I recently made the rounds of local garden centers with my 8-year-old daughter. We were out looking for bargains as well as great-looking plants and beautiful flowers. She likes planting with me, whether it’s digging the holes or helping me design the “look” for the summer.
It’s a great activity for us to do together, and by making her part of the process, she will learn valuable skills and responsibility.
Even though my daughter, like most kids we know, doesn’t like anything that remotely resembles the color green in her food, we decided this year we would add some vegetables and spices to our gardening. I thought that if I let her pick what to grow, she might change her mind about eating them.
She picked peas, sage, oregano, basil, and tomatoes. I reminded her that she didn’t like any of these things, except possibly tomatoes. But she looked at the photos and smelled the small plantings and said she thought it just might be OK.
A few weeks later, peapods starting to grow. Lo and behold, she started to eat them! Now she takes sage every week and puts it on her homemade pizza, and she tried the basil as well. Oregano didn’t pass muster with her, though—“too spicy.”
The tomatoes are growing and she can’t wait to eat them. She waters them constantly, even though we have had buckets of rain.
Since we didn’t purchase much to begin with, we are already seeing our plants dwindle so we will be back out there looking to fill our pots again during the upcoming holiday weekend.
Some quick shopping tips:
Look for flower shops that give volume discounts. We found that sometimes the shop will add several free plants.
Look for a gap in the prices per plant. If you are purchasing 10 to 15 plants, a 50-cent price difference per plant can make a huge difference.
Look for smaller plants. They will probably fill the pot as the summer wears on, so you can buy less volume.
It really pays to dig around.
