Category: Get Outside

Rain Harvesting

1/11/2018

A little rain can make a big impact!

Teach your little gardener about the importance of Rain Harvesting today.

Tomato in a Bottle?

7/29/2017

Tomatoes have glossy, thin, smooth skin. They come in all different shapes and sizes. Some are oval, some are tear-dropped shape, and a lot are the same size of a tennis ball.

So how did I get one inside this bottle? The bottle isn’t cut anywhere. How did it get in there?

Hmmmm…if you can keep a secret I’ll show you what I did.

What’s Needed:

Plastic bottle

Budding tomato plant

A bottle with a tomato inside is actually called an “Impossible Bottle.” These bottles have things in them that are too big to have been put through the hole on top, like a ship or a tomato. (Ships are actually put into the bottles in pieces or special hinges, but tomatoes have to be grown in there.)

Use a plastic bottle that is light enough to put on the plant without weighing it down too much. A water bottle works great.
When the tomato first starts to grow, gently insert it (still attached to the branch) through the bottle’s top.

The bottle then acts like a mini-greenhouse and actually helps the tomato ripen even faster. It holds in extra moisture and heats up at the same time. (If it gets too hot though your tomato could get scorched. If you have a shady spot to move the plant to you should.) Then, water your tomato plant as you normally do and just wait.

The tomato will start to grow and actually turn red inside the bottle. Once the tomato looks fully ripe, ask an adult helper to carefully snip it from the stem. Screw on the cap and there you have it – a tomato in a bottle. Go impress your friends and family!

Adult Helpers: Try this with fruits your yard too. Apples, pears or peaches are great. Just make sure they have a long enough stem that would look extraordinary in a bottle.

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Carrots

5/19/2017

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My favorite crop in the garden to grow has always been carrots.
I love when they little orange top peeks out of the dirt at me..

I love the feel of plucking it from the dirt. I love the crunch of the fresh bite, even when covered with dirt. Most importantly, I love the sense of accomplishment from eating a carrot that I grew all by myself.

When I was about 5 years old my father helped me plant my first garden and I remember the delight I had at the first sight of dazzling colors jumping out at me. Years later I am proud that my kids squeal with that same excitement, and although buying chilled bags of carrots is cheap and easy, they have learned the amazing tastes that come from fresh carrots they grow. (We have done taste tests between the bagged carrots and fresh ones. We discovered that the carrots that are oxygen-deprived in sealed plastic bags taste bitter and a bit metallic in flavor. WE also think that the sugar levels are lower. Although this is our own personal study.)

Carrots do not take up a whole bunch of space and may be a great addition to your learning garden adventures.
With just a few tricks and tips you can make the carrots you grow in your garden taste even better. First of all, find a nice sunny spot with good loamy soil. Have your kids remove any rocks or twigs in the ground. If these items aren’t removed they are like hurdles in the dirt and the carrots can’t grow over them.
Then it’s time to lightly scatter the lettuce sees onto the soil area. The seeds are tiny so I put them in a toothpick holder and let the kids lightly shake them out of the dispenser. Sprinkle the seeds with a thin layer of soil and then water.
We tend to water our carrots every other day. Also, because we all love the carrots so much, this year we have started succession planting with our carrots. This means that every 21 days we’re going to plant more seeds so we can get fresh carrots all season long.
The next big trick is to “thin” out the carrots as the leaves start to appear. Grab a ruler and make sure there are 3 inches between leaves. If you don’t thin them out the carrots won’t have room to grow. The more space they have to grow, the bigger the carrots will get. Make sense right?
When the orange roots start to peek out from the soil it’s time to harvest! When you pick out a carrot, be sure to cover the space back up with dirt so the nearby carrots can still continue growing!
Several varieties of carrot have been developed with taproots that attain different sizes and shapes. Imperator is the long, straight cylindrical type found in grocery stores. Other varieties such as Nantes, Danvers, or Chantenay are popular varieties for the home garden. Purple, yellow, red, and white carrots are available from many seed catalogs.