Garden Update: April

Things are coming along very nicely in our garden and the kids are so excited.. We went out this weekend to put cages around our tomatoes and to everyone's surprise, we have several plants starting to actually produce.

The first thing we noticed was that there are a number of tomatoes starting on each of our tomato plants. We currently have three varieties of tomato plants in our garden: 1 Big Boy, 1 Solar Fire, and 2 Purple Cherokees. We've left room to add 4 more plants and have seedlings still indoors for Pink Accordians, Carbon and more Purple Cherokees. We have not moved these particular seedings out to ground just yet because of the high winds we experience - the last few days we've been having 70 mile per hour gusts so we wanted to allow the stems on our plants to get stronger.   Of the 4 tomato plants currently in the ground, all but the Solar Fire is producing.  The kids really enjoyed looking at how the fruit looks different between the two different varieties currently growing tomatoes. The Purple Cherokee is more of a striped green where the Big Boy is just a solid green fruit at this point.  The Big Boy is also much more round in shape then the PC which is a big flatter.

Big Boy Variety

Purple Cherokee

The next thing the kids got excited about is that we're producing strawberries.. We've been watching the plants making flowers over the last week and now we are beginning to see the development of the fruit in the center of the buds.  

Our Onions are almost ready for harvest.. We're noticing that the tips are starting to turn brown and now we're just waiting for the greens to start falling over..

 We weren't sure how well the Kohlrabi was going to grow as we found out that we planted it at the absolute wrong time, but it is looking pretty amazing.. 

Garrett is super excited about the carrots.. They should be ready for harvesting sometime in the middle of next month..   I need to get some jars ready so that I can clean and can them for storage once they are ready :)

Our jalapeno plant has some VERY small peppers starting to grow. 

Our Loose leaf lettus is just about ready and looks absolutely amazing.. I think sometime this week we might go ahead and harvest some of it to try in a salad..  I've already started looking into buying some butter lettuce for our fall harvests. 

Our crisp head lettuce is looking equally as nice..   And one of our ladybugs decided to make an appearance while I was taking pictures.. lol

Our Brussels Sprouts are finally starting to make the stalk that will start lifting them off the ground and hopefully will start making some sprouts (these were another "mistake" we made as these were planted way too early). 

And my lone artichoke plant is doing great as well.. LOL

And here's our second round of radishes which are just about ready for harvest.. We will put another round in the ground once these are up (this particular type of radishes take about 22 days from seed to harvest). 

Things are also advancing inside the house with the Aerogarden as well as all the seeds that were started indoors in the hotbox.    When I first started the tomato seedlings, I honestly did not expect any of them to grow.  Tomato seeds are so tiny and fragile and I have typically don't have much luck with growing indoors.. But all have done really well and we have had to thin out our seedlings twice now as well as transplant to much bigger pots.. We're down to 2-4 seedings per pot and will most likely be thinning them out again in the next week or so.

Purple Cherokee

Purple Cherokees

Carbon seedlings

Seedlings in the hotbox

Okra seedlings in the hotbox

I have already had to harvest and thin out the Aerogarden on numerous occasions and it just keeps growing like crazy.  Last night we had tacos and used handfuls of cilantro that today I think it all grew back. LOL    We have potted the coleus that we had growing and now have two new coleus pods staring in the back.

Potted Coleus

The indoor tomatoes are in overload.. The aerogarden plant has grown much bigger and has a lot more tomatoes on it then the sunny window version which really hasn't changed since the last posting.   However, this plant is going crazy nuts with growth..  This is a view from the back of the aerogarden. The plant actually wrapped around the back edge of the unit and started growing downward. 

And here's a look at my counter in its current state.. LOL  Eventually I hope to transplant most of these plants outdoors into planters or into our garden itself. 

My husband and I have been talking over the last few days about actually renting a tiller and explanding the garden for the fall season.  The ground here is so hard and rocky that it just seems like a smarter move then trying to break it up ourselves..  Also, sometime next month, we will be planting some pumpkins which we hope will be ready by Halloween :)

Real Life Homeschooling - Day 4 - Our Outdoor Classroom

Today is Day 4 of The Schoolhouse Review Crew's "Real Life Homeschooling" bloghop.   I've already showed you some of the "ugly" that is our homeschool, but now I'll show you one of the awesome things we get to do.

Right now, our big project that we are all working on together is our garden. We started studying botany a while back which sparked our interest in starting a garden. We also got a great deal on an Aerogarden which is a small indoor hydroponics system. Using both of these in conjuction with our Apologia text book and notebook, the kids have been working hard every day to help tend the garden by preparing the soil (granted, Dad did most of the hard work), planting seeds, watering the garden twice a day, weeding, ect.    While we're taking care of the plants, hummingbirds buzz over our heads and butterflies and ladybugs flitter all around.  It makes for a really great learning environment.  It's also something that we have all worked on together - the kids have been outside with rakes and hoes along side Mom and Dad so it's not a project that they are just observing - they are completely involved.

The various things we have done, far beyond just the basic planting of bean seeds in a Styrofoam cup, have made it a really unique experience. We've tested the PH of the soil using vinegar and baking soda and then had to figure out how to raise the PH since we had extremely alkaline soil. The kids have had a wonderful time picking out vegetables to grow from seeds that they wanted, which has resulted in a garden currently full of carrots (Garrett's choice), and Brussel Sprouts (Ash's choice), Kohlrabi (Dad's choice) among other things.  We even made our own "hot box" which we have used to start seeds indoors .

The Inside of our hotbox.. Not much left except tomato seedlings.

Another thing we've gotten to do was plan our garden out using the Farmer's Almanac Garden Planner. We were able to use it to figure out how many plants we could put of each type of vegetable in the space we had.  The garden was originally only half of what it is now.

The current layout of our garden, soon to be expanded to include Tomatoes, pumpkins and watermelon

Our classroom extends way beyond a designated room inside a mortar and brick building that is typical public schools.   And we have the added benefit of time on our side - we can do our classwork during the very hot hours and then turn around and work in the garden once it cools off, which is long past the normal public school hours...  We've had fun exploring seed catalogs and learning about growing seasons and learning what mistakes we have made in this first garden so that when we begin planting for the fall crops, we will not make the same mistakes.

Here's what we have so far after 2 months of hard work    We started the garden officially on Feb 15th.

First, a reminder of what we started off with.. very dry, very sandy alkaline soil.

The beautiful green bounty that the kids have worked hard on. We weren't sure we would be able to grow anything being in the desert but so far so good. 

Garrett works on preparing dirt. He wants to plant a huge sunflower here.  In typical Garrett form, he refused to put a shirt on for the picture.. But, this is "Real Life Homeschooling" so.....

Our Garden.. More Green then we're use to seeing.   We've also noticed right close to the fence on the neighbors side has turned green from the extra water we're providing ;)  

Ashleigh's Brussels Sprout..  We ended up transplanting three of the plants today because we couldn't bring it to ourselves to discard three plants.  

Walla Onions with Radish seedlings on the right. We harvested radishes last week and those are the new ones we sowed a few days later.

And here are some of the radishes we grew.. We were all so excited to know we grew these from seeds - and they tasted GREAT to boot :)

Carrot plants.

 Our Aerogarden has been busy and the kids check it daily to see if its needing water or plant food.. We have used fresh herbs from it several times now and have even had to harvest from it and dry out what we cut in order to make room..   The Aerogarden is great for allowing the kids to observe the root systems of the plants and also to allow them to watch the tiny tomatoes start off as flowers and then the progression of the fruit. 

The VERY extensive root system in our Aerogarden.

About time to harvest in order to trim it down again.

Lots and lots of tiny tomatoes

My husband wanted Coleus so I started some for him..

 We are currently working on an experiment to see how plants grown in the Aerogarden compare to those grown in regular dirt.   We started both of our cherry tomato plants at the same time in the Aerogarden.   A few weeks ago, we removed one of the plants and put it in dirt and left the other one in the Aerogarden.    While the Aerogarden plant has definately grown much bigger then the dirt counterpart, both are producing fruit. So once we have tomatoes on them, we will taste one from each plant and see if there's any difference in taste.

This tomato plant enjoys lots of sun and the benefits of being in soil.

We can't forget about BIG tomatoes.. The kids and I started three different heirloom varieties from seeds. Honestly, we did not expect that they would grow but grow they did.. Before we knew it, we had so many seedlings, we knew we would not be able to put all of them in the ground.. We have transplanted the best of the seedings into Terra cotta pots and are letting them get bigger before we thin them out to the best plant out of each pot.. That way, we will have two Purple Cherokee, two Carbons and two Pink Accordion plants to put in the ground.

I leave you with this thought.. All of this is for one class, our Botany science class... My kids are getting a hands on education and are learning skills that one day might come in handy, if they ever have any desire to homestead or if there's some sort of event that makes growing ones own food necessary.     Real Life Skills from Real Life Homeschooling at it's best.

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I hope you've been enjoying these looks into our homeschooling and what the kids have accomplished. If so, please head over to visit the blogs of these other Review Crew member who are also participating in the "Real Life Homeschooling Blog Hop"

Treasuring Life's Blessings
Double O Farms
Simple Living Mama
Fried Clams and Sweet Tea
This Sweet Life
A Net In Time
Some Call It Natural
Kingdom Academy Homeschool
Debbie's Homeschool Corner
Life at Rossmont
A Stable Beginning
Happy Little Homemaker
Joyful Hearts and Faces
Day by Day in Our World
Mama's Coffee Shop
Delightful Learning
Double O Farms
Tales of a Homeschool Family
Home Sweet Life
A Rup Life

 

Discover real life in other homeschools with the Schoolhouse Review Crew bloggers! Join the blog hop to read more!

Also, if your also into gardening,  click on over to my friend Wren's blog and check out all the wonderful work they are doing in their garden :)

Update on our Garden

Two weeks ago I told yall that we bought an Aerogarden. We set it up that day with some herbs and cherry tomatoes and have been watching it grow for the last two weeks.  Today we had to add water and plant food to it, so we figured it would be a great time to document the changes.

The kids have been having so much fun seeing how big everything has gotten.  The plants are growing so fast that they are able to see the difference between the time they went to bed and the time they wake up.

Cherry Tomatoes on Feb 17th - 3 days after we set up our Aerogarden

Same Cherry tomatoes one week later

Cherry Tomatoes Today

Our Dill plant seems to have gone nuts..  Of all the herbs, dill is the one I was most looking forward to growing. I was a bit worried when the tomatoes and basil has both started growing and the dill had not. Then, I woke up and with no warning, I had a dill plant. It has grown like crazy in just a few days.

Dill Plant on Feb 22nd

Dill growth yesterday

The same dill plant today  along with basil next to it and chives in the front. Cilantro is covered with foil.

The only seed pod we have had any issues with has been the cilantro. There has been nothing to indicate that the seed germinated. However, I heard that if I placed a piece of foil over the pod, that it might have a better chance. I'm going to keep it covered for a few days and check it again, if it hasn't germinated by then, I will exchange it out with a coleus pod instead.

We've also had some growth in our garden outside as well.. Yesterday Ashleigh and I went outside to water our garden and were completely surprised to find that many seedlings were starting to pop up out of the ground.  

Tiny Lettuce seedings breaking ground

Walla Onion seedings breaking ground (with my garlic chives in front)

We finally got Apologia's Exploring Creation with Botany this week.  Monday we will begin setting up a Light Hut to start more seedings and Charles and I will clear out another garden area for the kids to plant them once they are grown. Since we already have some herbs growing, we will probably pass on them growing herbs and will instead let them start some flower seeds that we want to put out around the garden to bring pollinators and hummingbirds to our yard.