Well, the video is a little hokey, and the band a little odd, but this is one of my preschool students’ favorite songs. We sing it a lot! The Banana Slug String Band’s songs are filled with messages of conservation and connectedness to nature, like “Dirt Made My Lunch”.
While Northerners are still hoping for the snow to melt and the temperatures to crack the freezing point, folks down South are rolling up their sleeves and slipping on their gardening gloves. Which is why the Little Creek Farm Conservancy in Decatur, Georgia, will hold one of its semi-annual “Manure Days” this Saturday.
It’s already March, which means it is time to get into the garden! One of my greatest challenges when I first became a parent was to figure out how to garden with young children.
At first, I tried to rush out during their naps and frantically weed, plant, and harvest. Then, I realized I was robbing my children of the incredible experience of learning about plants and growing their own food.
Previously, I wrote about 10 Tips for Organic Gardening with Children. Recently, I discovered Molly Dannenmaier’s book A Child’s Garden: 60 Ideas to Make Any Garden Come Alive for Children. Wow, 60 ideas…that beats my ten!
The photographs in A Child’s Garden are incredibly beautiful and inspiring! Featured in the photos are innovative examples of how to create special natural places for your children in the garden, such as mazes, paths, out-of-the-ordinary sandboxes, child-friendly ponds, peepholes, etc.
Every time I go into a craft store, I visibly cringe while walking past the “floral” department. Some marketing genius decided to refer to them all as “silk” flowers, rather than what they really are: horribly fake plastic imitations of plants. Either way, I’m on a mission to dissociate that muck from mainstream crafting once and for all.
That is, until it becomes “the thing” to find their relics in thrift stores, and use them to make something really cool we haven’t even thought of yet. This isn’t to say that high quality, environmentally friendly silk and natural varieties don’t exist, but generally you will only be able to find them through a florist.
So, how do we fight our way out of the indoor polyester jungle? We should join forces to form a Fake Plastic Flower Death Squad. Here is our plan of action:
My six-year-old daughter loves oven roasted Jerusalem artichokes, and that’s a good thing, since they have taken over our garden. I call Jerusalem artichokes our survival food, as they grow so easily, spread like wildfire, and are ready for eating throughout the winter and early spring. Sure, they are a pain to clean, but that is a small price to pay for a homegrown meal in the winter. My family will never starve, as we always have Jerusalem artichokes.
Jerusalem artichokes are not artichokes, and they do not come from Jerusalem. They are often called sunchokes, as the plant grows very tall in the summer and blooms a golden flower. Sunchokes are native to the eastern US and were first cultivated by Native Americans, although they don’t take much cultivation, in my experience. According to Wikipedia, “Jerusalem artichokes have 650 mg. potassium per 1 cup (150g) serving. They are also high in iron, and contain 10-12% of the RDA of fiber, niacin, thiamine, phosphorus and copper.” Jerusalem artichokes offer an important source of potassium for those trying to follow the 100 Mile Diet and thus avoiding bananas.
Roasted Jerusalem Artichokes
Wash and cut the tubers into about 1/2-1 inch pieces, the more uniform, the better. Place the cut sunchokes in a glass baking pan and drizzle with olive oil. Salt and pepper to taste. Add crushed garlic (2-3 cloves for a 9″ x 13″ pan).
Sure you can buy your sweeties organic flowers or chocolate and have your children decorate Valentines made from recycled paper; however, in my family, we have another tradition. Every year for Valentine’s Day, we take the opportunity to buy a fruit tree or rose bush. What better way to express our love than to give a gift that may offset some of our carbon footprint?
I love chocolate as much as the next guy/gal, but I am not a fan of cut flowers, even though I worked in flower shop in high school. Lavish bouquets purchased to celebrate holidays have spawned a thriving industry that heavily relies on pesticides, herbicides, and fungicides. According to the Wise Geek:
Most cut flowers are grown in South America, Africa, and Southeast Asia in large greenhouse environments staffed by underpaid, non-unionized workers…Because cut flowers are grown in nations with more lax environmental laws, many banned substances including DDT and methyl-bromide are used in flower production…Some cut flowers may be shipped thousands of miles, adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere at every step of the way.
There’s a plethora of wonderful children’s books on gardening, but there is always room for more! What’s This? A Seed’s Story by Caroline Mockford is a charming story about a child’s discovery of a seed and the cycle of plant life. I was lucky enough to have my six-year-old daughter read this book to me for her homework.
What’s This? A Seed’s Story begins with a bird discovering a seed one winter morning. I anticipated the bird would eat the seed, then deposit its droppings somewhere and begin the plant’s life; however, my prediction was wrong. Instead, a little girl, along with her marmalade cat, discovered it and “planted the seed carefully in a corner of her garden.” My daughter has her own garden, as I believe every child should, so I was happy to see the main character in this book also has her own garden bed. (Fellow writer Beth recently wrote about her child’s birthday garden, but back to our story…)
You’d think in January, Sweden would be cold, blanketed with snow and ice, but not this year.
According to The Local, a hobby gardener in southern Sweden has already harvested the first potatoes of the New Year, with a garnish of strawberries and daisies.
Looking for an unusual green project for your kids? What about a worm bin?
Hold on, hold on. Before you completely throw that idea to the wind because you don’t want stinky, wriggling, slimy “pets” in your kids’ bedroom, hear me out. Worm bins, or vermicomposting, are a cool way to decrease the amount of solid waste heading into the landfill by recycling your food wastes into amazingly rich compost for your plants. Here’s the non-scientific explanation, suitable for explaining to your four-year-old: the worms eat our food scraps, and their poop can feed our flowers. Done correctly, a worm bin will produce less odor than collecting your food wastes for an outside compost pile, and the maintenance is simple enough that a child can do it. What a great way to teach science, stewardship, and responsibility all at the same time.
There’s two ways to procure a bin: buy one or build one. Jeff has instructions for a great DIY bin from the early days of Green Options that couldn’t be easier, or you can check out different models for purchase here.
Sustainability is making its way into mainstream periodicals. It seems like almost every magazine in the past year has featured a "green" issue, some credible, some not. My friend just gave me the green issue of a magazine targeted at the marketing industry. So it’s no surprise that Edutopia, an education magazine for teachers and administrators published by the George Lucas Educational Foundation, used sustainability as a theme for their
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The road to going green is, in my mind, quite mixed with the road to going healthier. Getting rid of our aluminum cookware is divided into the same category of my thoughts as using cloth napkins or recycled-paper towels. So what are we doing to get green & healthy now?
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