Gardening Projects for Kids

School’s out for the Summer! Join us for another edition of  In the Garden with UC Master Gardeners.  Teena and Katrina from “This Month in the Garden” episodes have gotten together again to let our listeners know some special garden projects that the kids will love during summer break. Teena teaches you all the techniques needed to keep a kid’s attention. One example is Bucket Gardening where each child gets their own bucket and everything they need to grow something. And then eventually (and hopefully) EAT IT! How about making SEED BOMBS or Bean tepees? Learn everything you need to know to keep your kids or grandkids busy and outdoors this summer. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:21

Greetings, this is Katrina Kirkity. I'm here with Tina Spindler, and we are UCCE Master Gardeners. And we are hosting the show today called In the Garden with Master Gardeners. Welcome, Tina. Thanks, Katrina. I am so looking forward to this show today. We are going to be doing something so much fun. We're going to be talking about projects with kids. And projects with kids, kids are very dear to Tina's heart. And you should see her right now. She is lit up. And Tina's going to be talking to us about the different things we could do with our little ones. Tina, welcome.

SPEAKER_02 1:02

Thank you, Katrina. Yeah, there's nothing that goes together more naturally than kids and gardening. And the reason I light up is because the experiences I have with kids in the garden are such that it just really reawakens in me the wonder of nature. And when a kid sees things that you're used to seeing over and over again every day, and you then see it through their eyes, it brings all of that excitement and wonder back to you. So I'm excited today to talk about some things that we can do with kids and get them engaged in the garden and also so that it benefits us as adults to get us more excited and more kid-like in our appreciation of nature.

SPEAKER_01 1:49

Oh my goodness, there's so many places to start. Where should we start today?

SPEAKER_02 1:52

You know, I have three specific projects that I'm going to go over today. I kind of wish it was television for this show, right? Because it would be really fun to visually do these projects. But instead, I'll take our listeners through these projects and give them lists of materials and step by step how they can do it with the kids. So I think we'll be good even without pictures. But before we get started on that, I want to just go over a few generalities of working with kids in the garden. And then the last thing that I'll do after we go through our three projects is I'll also mention and discuss a couple of places to go here in Orange County so that you can actually take your kids to some great gardens for kids. And if you don't have the opportunity to do much at your own home, then there are some options for taking them places and they can experience gardening that way. So first, I'm going to talk about what kinds of things you should think about before you even get started with kids in the garden. And it's most of this is just intuitive, but sometimes as adults, you know, we've been doing gardening a certain way, so we kind of think that's how it should be done, right? Right. Like what's your um you probably have a procedure when you're ready to go out and start gardening, right? You gather your tools.

SPEAKER_01 3:14

I have my belt.

SPEAKER_02 3:15

Yeah. And in my belt's all my tools. Right, right. And then you you go out and you've got your your big tools, your shovel, and and you know, you're ready to amend soil or dig a hole and plant a you know a tomato or something. And so we we automatically, if we garden, have these rituals that that we go through and that we plan for. But what we have to remember with kids is that to the kids, this is just a way to discover. And so they're probably not going to be thinking linearly like we do. You know how you think, okay, get my tool belt, get my garden shoes on, put my sun hat on, put my sunscreen on, you know, grab whatever I'm doing today, whether it's planting a new plant or amending the soil or whatever. You're thinking kind of in a line, yeah? Yes. Yes, definitely. And and that's how, you know, your ritual, right. And and we're, you know, we're efficient and we're grown-ups and we know what we need to accomplish, and so we go from A to B to C to D all the way to Z, right? Well, the first thing we have to do when we're working with kids is you are not gonna get from A to Z. You probably won't even get from A to C because the kids are gonna be at A, and then they're gonna see M, and then they're gonna see H, and then they're gonna see So they are going to be easily distracted, but easily amused and easily excited, and that's why it's so much fun to have kids in the garden. So I I truly recommend including your kids when you're doing your garden things, but don't expect that they're going to garden the way that you would. You mean you mean one might like to dig a hole? They might like to dig a hole. They'll find a snail and you may lose them for 15 minutes because they are exploring Snailville, you know, and but that's okay because that's they're in the garden, they're outside, they're not in front of an electronic device. So, you know, anything that they do out there, I think is going to be beneficial for them. Of course, you know, there are teaching moments and there are different ages, and so of course, you know, the older the child, the more likely they are to want to actually engage in a specific task and see it, you know, from its beginning to its end. But even kids, you know, who are nine or ten who you think you know you might have their attention and they could focus, they're gonna get distracted. And they're also not going to be real good at labor-intensive stuff. As soon as it starts to get you know more work-like than play-like, you're probably gonna lose them. So just I think having that mindset when you go out in the garden with your kids is the first step in having a successful adventure with them out there. So here's a couple of hints about how to do that. Um, if you are doing a particular task in your garden, like say you're gonna plant seeds that day or you're gonna amend soil, whatever it is, think about how your child could be involved in it in a way that lets them kind of start and stop. So, for instance, when you're amending soil, you're gonna have a shovel, you're gonna have a cultivator, give them a trowel, point to a corner of the area that you want to do, and let them just putter with their little trowel or their small shovel or whatever. Or alternatively, you dig the big chunks of soil and turn them over and give them a little hand cultivator that they can whack away and chop at the dirt to mix it up. Give them a little bucket of compost that they can, you know, say, Oh yeah, the soil needs compost. This is like feeding the soil. You give it the food, you know, and and let them, you know, throw the compost everywhere, you know. The tasks where they're not precise so that you don't have to correct them, you know, like, no, no, no, you're doing that wrong, because that will, you know, take the fun out of it and cause them to they don't want to play then. Yeah, they'll they'll want to disengage then. So so for general times in the garden, think ahead to what they can do that isn't gonna hurt anything, that they can still be with you, they can still participate, but in a kid-friendly kind of way. And one thing that is always a big hit with kids is give them a watering can. Yes. They will water forever. So if you have, you know, on your hose, you know, the nozzle that turns off automatically when you when you don't press it, you know, they can sit there and fill up a watering can and then they can go water. And you can tell them which areas you want them to water and which areas you don't want them to water. But um, you know, that's always a tried and true uh activity, is is the watering. They they are always really, really clued in. And and I've learned this because I, as you know, I I volunteer at a couple of different venues that have to do with kids. And I've learned, and plus I had my own two kids, so there was that. And and I tried to be a little more structured with my kids, and and I did lose them. And I I didn't get frustrated, but I was just like, oh well, you know, I guess they're not really interested. It's not their thing. Yeah, but it really it wasn't that it wasn't their thing. It's I was structuring it in a way that made it not be their thing. So I've since learned by being at these venues where there are lots of kids over and over again that there are certain ways that you need to you make it adventure exactly. Face on adventure, fun, exploring. And it doesn't matter if you're planting seeds, if they see a lizard, the lizard is the main object. Forget about those seeds. Exactly. They they don't care. It's watching the lizard. And why not? You know, or watching the butterfly. That's an equally important lesson. And you can turn that into a teaching lesson by saying, Oh my gosh, look at that lizard. He came to eat the bugs so that the bugs won't eat our food. And, you know, give them these little lessons, but they're in a way that they it's interesting for them. It's interesting, and they it it lets them know that what they're looking at and what they're thinking about is important. It's not about what you're thinking about, it's about what they're thinking about. So, time in the garden with kids, that's the main thing, is change your mindset from the task that you need to get done to letting the children discover moments in the garden. So, anyway, enough of that.

SPEAKER_01 9:54

Oh, I'm already excited.

SPEAKER_02 9:56

So, so now that we have our head around, you know, how to how to make this be a pleasant experience for kids, um, I want to talk about some specific projects because I think it's always a great idea to have something for the kids to do on occasion so that they get that sense of accomplishment that we as grown-up gardeners get. And so the first one I want to talk about is bucket gardens. Bucket gardens? Yeah, have you ever had a bucket garden? Oh, I think I'm gonna find out all about bucket gardens right now. Yeah, a bucket garden is for grown-ups too. It doesn't just have to be for children, but it is a way of giving children ownership of their very own garden. And what we're gonna do is we're actually going to create a garden for a child in a bucket.

SPEAKER_01 10:47

A bucket. Now tell us what kind of bucket are we looking for?

SPEAKER_02 10:50

That's the cool thing. You can use any kind of bucket you want. Uh, the cheapest ones probably are if you go to one of the big box retailers like Home Depot and you get those buckets that they sell for about five bucks, you know, the bright orange ones. Those are perfect size, but you can get, you know, a plastic if you have an old plastic cleaning bucket, you know, that maybe you aren't using anymore, or the traditional tin pail, you know, the galvanized pail bucket. Anything that has a handle on it and is a bucket-like container is is perfect. Basically, what we're doing is we're going to do container gardening with the kids, but we're going to do it in a way that is really kid-friendly. So let's just first go over the supplies that you need. You need obviously one bucket per kid, so however many kids you're doing this with, be sure you get each child a bucket because we really want them to have ownership of this. It's their bucket. It's their bucket of the bucket. Oh yeah. And it it, you know, you then you don't have one kid saying, No, it's my turn to put the soil in, you know, because they each I want this, and they each have their own bucket, so or get a couple of buckets for each kid if you want them to plant different things, because I like to do two buckets for each child because I like them to plant from seed, but a kid may not, especially the younger kids, may not really get what the seed is going to do. And it takes, you know, five to seven days for most seeds to germinate, and that attention span they may not have that connection from when they planted the seed to when it germinates.

SPEAKER_01 12:35

It's kind of boring, just some dirt. Exactly.

SPEAKER_02 12:37

So I like let's go dig it up. Yeah. Let's let's make sand capsules with it, you know. We got a tractor in there. Yeah. Or take take their little toy cars and run around in there. Um, so I like to do two. I like to do one with seeds, and then I like to do a second one with a plant that they can see right away. And whether you choose that plant to be lettuce, if your kids will eat lettuce, I know mine wouldn't eat lettuce when they were little, but if your kids eat salad, that's a great one to start with because as you know, you can harvest the lettuce right away. Right away, yeah. Yeah, by pulling the outer leaves off. The other one that that kids really get a kick out of, though, is strawberries. So if you can buy six packs of strawberry plants that are already going, that already have baby strawberries on, then you've got their attention, right? They'll be looking at that plant every day, waiting for that strawberry to turn red. Oh, how cute. Yeah. Patience. They're gonna learn patience too. Exactly. Well, and they also learn appreciation for the food on their plate. You know, every carrot you eat took, you know, what, eight weeks to grow? It's uh it's pretty phenomenal the debt of gratitude we owe to the people who grow our food. But anyway, so so the supplies you need are one, at least one bucket per child, and then of course you need potting soil, a bag of potting soil. And then, as I said, you can do seeds or plants. If you're doing seeds, good choices are radishes, lettuce, peas, carrots, beans. And the reason that I like those is that um the radishes, of course, germinate and mature faster than anything else. So radishes germinate generally in three to five days. So, wow, even for a small child, a young child, that's pretty quick. And then they're mature in three weeks. So in 21 days, you can harvest a radish, and a lot of kids don't like radishes, but you know, if they grew it, they they might want to eat it. So um, but they can see the whole life cycle of seed to food in as little as three weeks. So radishes are good. The other ones that I like to plant are lettuce because it's super easy to germinate, and you can harvest that by pulling out the little seedlings, you know, and using those as baby gourmet lettuces. And then eventually, as the plants get full size, you can harvest the outer leaves, and your your lettuce bucket garden will last for, gosh, I don't know, what would you say, Katrina? Three months or so?

SPEAKER_01 15:11

Yeah.

unknown 15:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 15:12

Depends on where you keep it and how much sun it gets and how well you take care of it. But yeah.

SPEAKER_02 15:16

Yeah, so so that's the other reason I like lettuce is it's a very long harvest time. And lettuce is something that's easy for kids to harvest. You know, you can send them out, you can show them how to break off a leaf, or give them a little safety scissors and show them how to cut off a leaf, and you can have them bring in the salad for dinner, you know, so that gives them a sense of you know participation in the family meal. So lettuce is a good one. And then carrots are good in that they take forever in terms of a kid's attention span. Because it takes about eight weeks to get carrots to that you can eat, eight to twelve weeks, depending on whether you're harvesting them at the baby carrot size or the bigger size. But kids love usually to eat carrots, and I call it digging for buried treasure.

SPEAKER_01 16:07

It's hysterical.

SPEAKER_02 16:08

Oh yeah. I mean, you've done it with kids in your garden, I know.

SPEAKER_01 16:11

Oh, it's just hysterical watching them. They're just like it's just amazing what comes up, and their eyes get so big, and a carrot is attached to this thing. It's just it's great.

SPEAKER_02 16:20

Oh yeah. So even though these take a long time, which is why I say maybe plant more than one bucket and put the carrots aside, you know, and just wait and wait and wait. But man, when they're ready to harvest, the kids go bonkers to pull out a carrot. So that's why I like carrots. Um, and then peas and beans I like because the seeds are big, so they're easy for especially younger children to handle, and they grow really fast. You know, the vines grow really fast, and and we uh we're we'll talk about putting trellises in these buckets if you're gonna do that type of plant. So those are really fun for the kids to watch, you know, and the whole Jack and the Bean stalk story, you know, you can you can tie all of that together. That's terrible. Yeah. So so seeds, if you're gonna do seeds, again, radishes, lettuce, peas, carrots, beans, good choices. Or you can do already started plants. Again, I like lettuce and peas, and you can buy those in six packs, and tomatoes also. Now, the tomatoes, of course, will take a little longer, but that's a great plant to teach the kids the different parts of a plant. Because think about it, when you plant the tomato plant, you are going to take it out of the pot and you'll see the roots, right? So you can talk about roots. And then when you're putting it in the ground and you're putting a stake next to tying the stem to the stake so that it grows tall, then you're talking about the stem of the plant. Then of course there's the leaves, and then there will be the flowers, and then of course the flowers will turn into the fruit. And so you have all of the parts of the plant on that tomato plant, and so it's just kind of a great botany lesson, you know, to teach the kids. And what I like to do with tomatoes is if you have a magnifying glass, when you're planting them, it's really fun for the kids when they take it out of the pot to look at those roots under the m the magnifying glass, right? Really? Yeah, and then have them look at the leaf, and they can see all the veins in the leaf, and you can talk about how the roots bring the water and the food up and see it go through the veins, and you can point to the veins in your hand and you know make that connection for them. And uh, and then of course, you know, looking at the you know how the stems of tomatoes are kind of hairy looking. Well, you don't really notice that unless you look through a magnifying glass. And then, of course, the flowers, and you can show them the parts of the flowers where the bee brings the pollen and explain how that will fertilize the flower and make it turn into a fruit, and talk about how the seeds form in the fruit, and that's where the next generation of plants comes from. So there's I just love tomatoes just because it's a fun way to give them a botany lesson. Oh yeah. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 19:07

And they're learning they don't even know it.

SPEAKER_02 19:09

Yeah, and especially cherry tomatoes, those A are easy to grow in containers, and usually the cherry tomatoes get a lot more fruit, you know, than the big old tomatoes. And they're kids size. They're kids, yeah. Yeah, and so you just pick them and eat them. Yeah, and a lot of small kids aren't super fond of tomatoes, but I find that when you have a cherry tomato, they're kind of okay trying a cherry tomato just because it's their size, you know, rather than a big old one you have to slice. Yeah. So, and then of course, as I mentioned before, strawberries are a great plant to use in the bucket garden because the kids just they're all familiar with strawberries, they all seem to love strawberries. I've yet to have a kid tell me they don't like strawberries, and I tour about 60 kids every Monday through a garden, and uh every time we get to the strawberries, they all go bananas for the strawberries. Get it? Bananas for the strawberries? Anyway. So yeah, so those are your choices. Seeds versus plants. And then the other thing that you need, and this is optional, but I think it really makes the the day for the kids, is paints or permanent markers. And why do you need that? Because you're gonna decorate the bucket. It's gonna be your bucket. Katrina's bucket garden. Although, gosh, you have a long name. As a little kid, that would take quite a while. I was Tina. Oh, there you go. Two Tina's here. So, yeah, so you want them to write their name on the bucket, to draw a picture of whatever they want, a flower, the sun, a vegetable, but it's just fun if they have some paint or permanent markers that they can make that bucket their own.

SPEAKER_01 20:55

Oh, yeah, show ownership and they oh, that's a great idea. Yeah, so so that is the other you got an art project going on here.

SPEAKER_02 21:03

You do, it's fun. Yeah. First of all, it's an art project because that's how you start off is by, you know, decorating the bucket. Um, then also um get some paint stir sticks, you know, the long big ones that you can get. And the reason I like those is for little kids, we're gonna use them to make the name of the plant.

SPEAKER_01 21:22

But you can write really big on there.

SPEAKER_02 21:24

You don't want to give them the ones we use as grown-ups because that requires really fine motor skills, right? And so that's fine for 10, 11-year-olds, but for a four-year-old who you know might just be learning his letters, you know, you you want something that they can see. Do big, right? So the paint stir sticks are great, and then you can use the permanent markers, you know, to write tomato or strawberry, or if they don't uh know their letters yet, have them draw a picture of, you know, the tomato and color it red or whatever. So then If you are going to do the tall plants like tomato, beans, or peas, you also need some bamboo poles. Three bamboo poles that are get the five foot tall ones so that you can stick them in the pot and still have at least four feet of the pole above the ground. And at the top where all three of those poles come up, you're going to tie them together with twine so that you're a teepee. Exactly. So that's tying the top of the teepee together. Exactly. So those are the supplies that you need. And then of course the assembly of it is you know pretty self-explanatory. But the main thing you need to do before you get the kid involved is you need to poke holes in the bottom of that bucket. So get a screwdriver and a hammer or an awl and a hammer and or a drill, a drill bit, you know, if if you have what it is, and just drill some holes or poke some holes in the bottom, because you obviously need to have drainage in your bucket. And uh if you want, you can use gloves. I personally with kids think it's fun to just get your hands right in the soil. It's gonna be down their shirt and in their pants. Oh, you would be surprised when I tour kids at Centennial Farm how many of those kids, because we plant radish seeds with them there, are afraid to put their hands in the in the potting soil. And we don't give them gloves, we just say do it. But they're these kids are so well trained not to be dirty that they that they balk a little bit at um putting their hands in the soil. So anyway, if if you do want them not to get dirty, you could get them kid-sized gloves. But personally, I like for them to just get in there with their hands. And uh yeah, so that's that's what you need in terms of tools and supplies. And then as far as actually doing it, uh you as an adult want to poke the holes in the bottom of the bucket before you get the kids involved, because it's just not a good idea to have sharp things and hammers um when the kids are there because they see you pounding on it, they're probably gonna want to try it. And before you know it, somebody's it's not as delightful of a day. No, no. So so poke the holes in before the kids are there. Then um give them the bucket and the art equipment, the art supplies, whatever you've decided, the permanent markers, the paint, the paintbrushes. Put an old set of clothes on them, obviously, or an apron, because odds are they're gonna get paint all over themselves, and let them decorate their bucket and just go to town, and they can at the same time, while you have the paints out, decorate their plant label, their paint stir stick. So do all the painting first, and then maybe set that aside to dry, have a little snack while you're waiting for the paint to dry, and then come back and fill the pot up with potting soil. Pretty self-explanatory. Don't let the kids overfill it. Don't let them smash the soil down that it's so hard that it's like cement. Uh so monitor that activity a little bit. You want to leave about an inch of head space, you know, don't fill it to the top, but fill it to within an inch of the top of the bucket. And then you're ready to plant. If you've decided to do the seeds, you will look at the directions on the back of the seed packet and you'll plant those seeds according to those directions. So for instance, if it's carrots, you'll just want to sprinkle them on the top and then cover them with just a real thin layer of soil, eighth of an inch, quarter of an inch. If you're doing peas or beans, you're gonna want to actually poke your bamboo poles in first, and then you're gonna want to plant seeds on either side of each bamboo pole, because you're gonna want those seeds to climb up, the plants to climb up the bamboo poles. And then you'll water. That's of course one of their favorite things to do is to water their seeds. You might need to watch them while they're watering a little bit. Exactly. Um, you don't again, as we've talked before, you don't want to water and have the water wash the seeds over the edge of the bucket. So you want to gently water, let it soak in, gently water, let it soak in. And you want to keep watering until that moisture runs out of the holes, the bottom of the bucket. That way you know that you've got water through all of the soil. Oh, and one thing I didn't mention, um, if the soil in your when you purchase the bag of potting soil, usually it's nice and moist inside, but if it's dry, you do want to moisten the soil first before you put it in the bucket because uh seeds don't grow very well in dry soil and it's hard to moisten soil when you've already got it in the bucket. So I would go ahead and pour some water in that bag and smoosh it around so that you have a nice moist planting medium. So, yeah, and then uh you need to put it in a sunny spot, right? Because veggies need sun. Exactly. And you need to, if you planted seeds, you don't want to let those seeds dry out because they will not germinate if they dry out at all. So you want to check those seeds every day, probably give them a little bit of a gentle sprinkle. Um, preferably get a kid-sized watering can because water's heavy.

SPEAKER_01 27:20

Water's really heavy. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 27:22

So get a kid-size watering can that has a nice little nozzle spray thing on the end of the watering can rather than just a spout because that just kind of digs holes in the soil if you have one of those types of watering cans. So and then you just go out with your kid every couple of days and see if the seeds are up, and it's just a really fun way for them to have their own garden. And then when the seeds sprout, oh my goodness. Oh, they'll be so excited. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 27:53

Absolutely. You never know what you might be starting with at.

SPEAKER_02 27:56

Yeah, in fact, they may want to dig up your lawn and plant a vegetable garden or something horrible like that. Oh my god, I love it. Yeah. Anyway, so that's project number one. And uh, should we go on to project number two or do you want to do a station ID?

SPEAKER_01 28:14

Well, you know what, let's just give it another minute or two and then let's start sta um our second one and then just take a quick break for that.

SPEAKER_02 28:21

Okay, sure. So the second project we're gonna talk about is seed bombs. Doesn't that just sound sounds like a boy thing. I know. It just is almost like uh, I don't know.

SPEAKER_01 28:35

You're right.

SPEAKER_02 28:40

But it's it's um it's not a naughty project.

SPEAKER_01 28:43

It's actually um a really fun, fun project. You know, Tina has all these different sh you should see her smiling right now. She's just lighting up and is as happy as can be. Oh, it's um it's pretty fun.

SPEAKER_02 28:55

So uh seed bombs are actually something that you can do to plant seeds. And the reason that we call it seed bombs is it's a project that you make with clay and compost and seeds all mixed together and you roll them into little balls the size of meat, you know, small meatballs. And then the kids can, once they are dry, can take them outside and chuck them and you know, throw them, and then where they land, theoretically the sprinklers or the rain will dissolve the seed bomb, and these uh wildflowers um will grow.

SPEAKER_01 29:36

Now we're gonna find out about seed bombs. Oh boy, this would be exciting here, Tina. Well, um, it's it's actually quite benign.

SPEAKER_02 29:47

It's not the least bit violent. But um, she had one in baseball. But it it is it is a fun thing and it does capture the imagination of the kids because I mean how often do we let them you know chuck things you know out in the yard and and just leave them, right? We always make them pick their toys or whatever. And this is an activity where they actually just get to make something which is really gooey and messy, so it's it's fun from that standpoint. And then afterwards we allow them to you know toss these in in the garden. So anyway, what a seed bomb is, as I mentioned, is it's made of clay, compost, and wildflower seeds, or you can choose easy to germinate garden flower seeds, and and I'll mention what those are in a little bit. And what you need is you need some clay, and the one that I found is easiest to find is Crayola makes a brand called Crayola Air Dry Clay. It comes in a tub. And so you need that, and then you need a bag of compost, which you can just buy, you know, at the garden center. And then you need your seeds, whatever seeds that you want to plant. And the seeds that I uh like to do for wildflowers for around here, this time of year especially, would be California poppies, of course. Then another one is called tidy tips, uh, that's the daisy type uh. Another one is lupin, you know, our blue, our blue lupin, that's another good one. Um, there's another one called blue-eyed grass, which is a little grass-like flower or plant that gets little blue flowers on it. So any of our wildflower seeds are great for these seed bombs. If you want to do garden kind of flowers instead, because you don't have like a wild area that you want to populate, you can use Bachelor Buttons or Elyssum, Forget Me Knots, Fever Few, and Cosmos. And the reason those are good suggestions is because they germinate super easily. So when you make seed bombs, what you want are seeds that are going to germinate real easy, not seeds that are, you know, super sensitive and fussy. So once you have those things, you're ready to get started. This is a super easy project, but you might want to do it outside, or you might want to do it uh in a place where you can clean up easily because it is messy. Think of mud pies. Did you ever make mud pies? I love mud pies.

SPEAKER_01 32:20

I think the best mud pies. Well, this this is making mud pies, basically. We do mud pie lessons in our house. Oh, you have lessons. Oh, yeah, well, we call it lessons, but you it's a free-for-all.

SPEAKER_02 32:31

That is too funny. Well, then you definitely need to make seed bombs because it's the same thing as making mud pies. So you take this container of clay and you dump it into. I used, I have this great big stainless steel mixing bowl, right? Exactly. Yeah, and and if you have multiple kids, and actually you should divide it up anyway, because it's um for a child, the whole container of clay is is a little too much for them to handle. So, say you had four children that you were going to do this activity with, I would cut that uh container of clay into four chunks, I would get four big bowls, you toss um a chunk of the clay in each of the bowls, and then you take the container that the clay was in and you fill it with compost. And then you put, if you're doing again, four, you would just take one fourth of that compost and put it into each bowl. This should be TV because I'm doing it with my hands. Katrina's watching me.

SPEAKER_01 33:27

I completely understand. I'm watching.

SPEAKER_02 33:30

Too bad it's not TV. Oh well. Um, anyway, so you put the the compost into each of the bowls as well, and then you take your seeds, and I would get uh one regular size seed packet for each bowl, you know, for each kid, so like one packet of poppy seeds. Or if you want to do several kinds of seeds, you can get, you know, several packets. And then you sprinkle the seeds in there, and then you want to, the adult should do this, you want to slowly add water and start squishing the compost and the uh clay and the seeds together. You're making your mud pies now, right? But you don't want to add too much water because you don't want it to be mud soup or mud stew, right? And yet um you have to add enough, and the adult may have to help a little bit at first, depending on how old the children are. Strength of their hands. The strength of their hands, because the clay is pretty stiff until you get enough water worked into it. So you might want to start doing that for them at the beginning, and then of course they can finish it up. And then then all you have to do once it's all thoroughly mixed, is you just you know take a little bit of it off and you roll it into a meatball-sized uh ball. And you know, if the kids can't get it exactly into a ball shape, it doesn't matter. If it looks like an egg, it's fine. An egg, if it looks like a cylinder, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter at all. Just let them, if they want to make like a hamburger patty out of it. A frisbee. A frisbee, whatever. It can be pretty much any shape. Um, but you want it to be about one inch in diameter. You don't want to be, you know, like a three inch.

SPEAKER_01 35:12

It should be about frisbee, but yeah, flat saucer thing.

SPEAKER_02 35:14

Right. And and the reason you don't want it too big is it remember this thing has to dissolve when water hits it. So if you make, you know, a four or six-inch ball, it's never gonna dissolve, right?

SPEAKER_01 35:24

It's gotta throw it too. Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_02 35:28

Yeah, exactly. Or you don't want them to kill someone when they're when they're throwing it, right? End up with somebody having a concussion.

SPEAKER_01 35:35

So the ideal size is probably about an inch.

SPEAKER_02 35:37

Yeah, I made mine into like inch-size balls, like a like a meatball, like an appetizer meatball kind of thing. And then you just set them on a cookie sheet and you let them air dry, and once they're dry, you can put them in a ziploc bag. And you know, if grandma lives out near Murietta and has 10 acres of land, you can go seed bomb her whole property.

SPEAKER_01 35:59

You know, and we live in Orange County, and there's some wonderful hills to go hiking in. And you see the wildflowers, and then you come back the next year and say, I did this.

SPEAKER_02 36:09

Well, yeah, if you're doing wildflowers, I would say that would be okay, but I would not sew any garden type flowers in our wild areas because we wouldn't want to bring something that was invasive into our wild areas. So, what I always tell people when I suggest this project is get permission wherever you want to seed bomb. So, and but it's a good thing to do at schools, even. Your school might be happy, you know, maybe they have a planter that doesn't have much going on and they'll let your you know first grade class, you know, seed bomb that planter, and you know, or your church, or you know, or like I said, your um, you know, now we're you know, in your garden and in my garden, we have these slopes in different parts of our yard where not a whole lot, you know, we don't do a lot of active gardening. So those are perfect places to seed bomb, and that's that's where I seed bombed this year, is is the space next to my you know, regular garden got seed bombed because it doesn't really have a whole lot growing on it anyway. So anyway, so that's the fun thing. The other thing you can do with them is you can actually put them in little gift bags, and so you could give them like at Easter for little Easter gifts. Yeah, what is it? Little little seed bomb, you know, like instead of candy in a uh you could give a instead of an Easter basket, you could give seed bombs. So anyway. So that's another idea I have for kids.

SPEAKER_01 37:39

You know, and I know you have another one coming up, which I'm really excited about. Tell us about the the bean teepee tunnel.

SPEAKER_02 37:47

Well, we talked about growing beans and how that's such an easy seed for kids to plant because it's nice and big, it germinates pretty quickly, and then it grows, the vine grows relatively quickly. Like you can almost watch it every day grow a couple of inches. And so another project using beans is to make either a bean teepee or a bean tunnel in your backyard. And it's super easy, and it will give you beans to eat as well, but it gives the kids a kid space, a fun space that they can also play in. Have a fort. Have a fort. You know, I mean, oh, absolutely. So the equipment that you need for this depends upon how big of a bean teepee or a bean tunnel that you want to grow. And uh you need kind of the same materials for either one, but you arrange them differently. So let's talk about the bean teepee first. So, for a bean teepee, you probably need a six by six foot area in your backyard. Uh, and you're going to want to dig the soil around the periphery of this area. It would be a six-foot circle, is what you need. And you're going to want to dig the area around the perimeter of the circle and improve that soil because you're going to be planting beans in the soil to grow. And you're going to want to have about six or eight big bamboo poles, like the six-foot bamboo poles. The heavier duty ones. The heavier duty ones, yeah. And you're going to sink those into the ground spaced evenly around the circle, except that at one side of the circle, you're going to omit a pole because that's the entrance. So, so leave leave a spot for them to crawl inside. And then, of course, you you poke the bamboo poles into the soil, leaning at an angle, because you want them to all join at the top so that you make the teepee. And then you're gonna tie those bamboo poles together where they all meet at the top to form the teepee. So that would be the part for the grown-up to do, to do the digging and the soil preparation and put the bean poles in, the bamboo poles in, in advance, probably of getting the kids out there, because otherwise they'll probably drive you crazy. You know, now can we do it? Now can we do it? You know, are we ready yet? Are we ready yet? Are we there yet? So you might do that and have it as a surprise and bring them out to the garden and say, look what I made, and now you guys get to plant beans. And so then next to each pole, where each pole is going into the ground, you'll want to plant a little half circle of bean seeds. So you can probably plant, you know, I would do four to six seeds in a little circle, half circle around that pole. And the reason I would do that many, you're probably gonna want to thin it to three plants, but I always like to plant twice as many seeds. I think you do that too, don't you? Just in case. Just in case, yeah. So once they, if they all germinate, then you can pull out three and leave three. Um, but I like to plant a few so that there's uh an assurance that you're gonna have these plants. Now, the more poles you put, the more dense the cover of your beans are going to be. So if you only do, say, six poles, you know, you're gonna have some gaps, which is fine, you know, the kids can you know look out and and so on. But if you want it to be pretty dense with foliage, then you might want to put your poles about a foot apart and get enough poles to put them about a foot apart because then when the foliage comes in, it's really gonna be you have a hideout. You do, you do. So it you know it depends on how much you want to invest in the poles. Um, but it it will be a hideout if you put them about a foot apart. So, of course, after you plant these seeds and the kids water them and in a few days, they're gonna see the beans sprout. And what you probably want to do, and this is true whenever you plant beans or peas, is the darn birds, do they ever come get your peas and beans? Oh yes. Yeah. Makes you be not a bird lover when they do that. So, what I like to do is I save the strawberry baskets, you know, that strawberries come in, and I just put those on top of where I've planted the seeds. And that way, as the seeds sprout up, the birds can't get to them because they're covered with the strawberry basket, but the air and the light still gets through. And then once the little seedlings are pushing the basket up, then you can remove it, and usually the birds aren't so interested by that stage. And then, of course, you just want to encourage the vines to wrap around the pole, which they kind of do naturally anyway. But if you see the vine kind of flapping in the breeze, you can just gently wrap it around the pole. And of course, as the summer progresses, they'll climb the whole length of the pole, the leaves will fill out, you'll start to get the beans, you can harvest the beans and bring them inside, and maybe your kids will even eat them. You never know. They grow them. Yeah, exactly. And then, of course, because you've left one side of it open, the kids can crawl in there and that becomes their play space. Their secret hideout.

SPEAKER_01 43:23

How exciting. Oh my goodness.

SPEAKER_02 43:25

Now you do the same thing with the bean tunnel, but with the bean tunnel, of course, uh the object is to make a space that they can crawl through. And so instead of doing the teepee shape, you know, with the the bamboo poles, you might want to use some um one by one pieces of lumber and actually have a vertical piece and then a cross piece, uh, you know, two vertical pieces, say spaced three or four feet apart, and then nailed. a cross piece on top and you'll want to have as many of those as you want your tunnel long. So I would space those about, you know, one to two feet apart. And then have again, as I said, have as many of those as you, you know, if you want a six-foot tunnel, then you'd need to have six of those so that you had a six foot tunnel. If you want a four foot tunnel, then you would need fewer. But the object is to have a a square-shaped you know structure. And then what we're going to do is we're going to again plant the beans by each of those pieces of wood and have train them to grow up and over. And if you have them planted close enough together then you're going to get a completely covered tunnel and the kids can you know crawl through and and have again either a secret hideout or just this tunnel that they get to to walk through. I I like to keep them only about four feet tall because the kids get a huge kick out of it if grown-ups can't walk through it. Yeah. So if the kids, if it's tall enough for the kids to get into but short enough that grown-ups would have to squat or crawl through, then that's quite amusing.

SPEAKER_01 45:18

You know Tina, of the two, is there one that's easier to do if you're the first time attempting this?

SPEAKER_02 45:22

From a construction standpoint the bean teepee is way easier, right? Because all you have to do is lean the poles together and tie them with a a piece of twine. But if you're a little bit handy and you don't mind nailing some things together then the bean tunnel is is fun. Yeah. You could do both.

SPEAKER_01 45:43

You could do both if you have the space. Got the space and the time and the inclination. Yeah absolutely Gina you do so many different things with kids at so many different places. Could you tell us a little bit about some of the places that you volunteer and some of the programs they have for children?

SPEAKER_02 45:59

Yeah I I volunteer um basically at three different kinds of venues and one of them of course is uh what I think is the best school garden ever at Tuston Memorial Academy in Tuston. They have an amazing uh gardening program there for for the school every child in every grade plants raises and harvests crops twice a year. So they do a cool season planting and and a warm season planting. They are incredibly well organized. And then they sell the produce which is hysterical they have they have a produce stand at school I think every Thursday and if they're good kids the teachers actually hand out I think they call it green green bucks or garden bucks I forget now. And so if you do a good thing you get a garden buck and it's like a gift certificate. So you get a you know you can go buy a buck's worth of produce. I love it with your little garden buck that you earned. Anyway it's a fabulous program and so I've worked with the kids there and mostly the adults actually because I've trained the parents in addition to a room parent they have a garden parent for each classroom who literally is the one that takes the children out into the garden which allows the the teacher to have a smaller group that she works with on a subject while part of the class is going out to the garden. So it it's actually been very well received by the teachers too because they get to have this smaller group that they work with for a little while on garden days. But what we've had to do there is we've had to as I mentioned at the beginning of the show remember how children attention works in the garden and it's you know short-lived and so we we've cut things down into small manageable chunks for for the kids. The other places that I volunteer are the Farm and Food Lab at the Great Park which is a wonderful demonstration garden. And they have it's actually just a fabulous place for kids to explore. It's very kid friendly they it's fenced so you can kind of turn them loose.

SPEAKER_01 48:16

Does that mean anybody can go there?

SPEAKER_02 48:18

Anyone can go there. It's open from I believe 10 to 3 it's basically a demonstration garden. It's organized into different garden exhibits so there's about a dozen themed beds. Each one has a theme like pizza garden or fruit salad garden so on and so forth. It has all kinds of fruit trees so the kids can actually see an apple growing on a tree. Oh my god and could you tell us where this is again yeah it's at the Orange County Great Park which is off the five freeway at Sand Canyon. So that's a great place and it is open to the public yeah open to the public people are welcome. Absolutely and then the last venue is one that I volunteer at every Monday and it's the Centennial Farm which is a four-acre demonstration farm real farm real animals real plants and that's at the fairgrounds at the Orange County Fairgrounds and our listeners if they have children may have already experienced this because it's a field trip venue and so I that's what I do every Monday is I tour groups of 20 kids a couple of times do two tours and we take them through the farm they get to see every single animal. What kind of animals do they have there? Pigs, cows, sheep goats, chicks we hold baby chicks uh the public doesn't get to do that but you can see baby chicks um but when you go on a tour you get to actually hold the kids get to hold a baby chick. But they can see baby chicks they can see grown up chickens they can see roosters a peacock even bunnies.

SPEAKER_01 49:52

But this is primarily just for school children?

SPEAKER_02 49:54

It is open to the public actually it's closed to the public until one in the afternoon but then from one to four during the week it's open to the public and on Saturdays and Sundays it's open to the public and it's free. It doesn't cost anything.

SPEAKER_01 50:07

It doesn't free. Yeah. So you could bring your whole family down there absolutely and go in for free.

SPEAKER_02 50:13

Yeah and and you'll see it looks like a real farm. There's barns there's you know two barns the barns have cows in them there's a video in the big barn in the milking barn. There's a video you can watch that shows you how they milk the cow and how how long would it take if I wanted to bring my family down? How long do you think it would take to go through it? It depends. I mean the tours that I give are an hour and a half. So you could spend an hour and a half if you want or you know if the kids are just running through then then they they may do it in less. But if you actually look at stuff in the garden um and look at each animal then it can take about an hour and a half I would allow yeah or longer you know if you wanted to bring you know uh picnic lunch and sit and have your lunch there are picnic tables there. There are picnic tables so you could really make a an adventure out of it. You could definitely yeah and it's um there's a lot of signage so even though you don't have a docent uh guiding you you can still get a lot of knowledge because there's a sign at virtually every animal's pen and at every uh you know in front of a lot of the vegetables it will tell you you know broccoli has these vitamins and you know is a cool weather plant and when you eat broccoli you're eating the flower bud and you know so so the signs actually will give you a lot of the information that I as a docent you know tell the kids. But if you just go on your own you can you can glean so much information. It tells you how long it takes for you know a pig to be pregnant and uh you know what the different types of cattle are you know beef cattle versus dairy cattle and it's it's an amazing it's a great way for everyone including adults because I have to tell you I you know I say things to the kids like you know the farmer raises pigs to get bacon and you know the the parents will look at me and say oh yeah you have to you have to slaughter the and I'm going well you know how do you think you get bacon you know it's and so it's it's good for us as urban dwellers to remember as adults you know where our food comes from and for the children they actually have zero clue that bacon comes from an animal unless we're gonna be able to a lot of the people living here too grew up in the city.

SPEAKER_01 52:32

Yeah and they it's not only children that don't know and it's adults that don't know also and it's a safe place to go and learn.

SPEAKER_02 52:40

It is such a great place to go and learn because I mean it's it's funny because you know in the hen house we don't have roosters there's just hens and the the grown ups are astounded that the hens can lay eggs without having a rooster present but you know if if you didn't grow up on a farm you know you you don't understand those things so or that it that a hen lays one egg every day. I mean how would you know that if you didn't grow up on a farm you know so it's it's a fabulous place. I recommend going to it even if you're a grown-up and you don't have any kids. And how would they find out about this? Again you can go to the Orange County Fair website or you can uh Google Centennial Farm and it will come up and it will tell you the hours.

SPEAKER_01 53:23

And Centennial Farm also occasionally has uh gardening classes for grown ups uh in the springtime how wonderful thank you so much Tina we've come to the end of our hour and I know I've learned a lot and I want to go borrow a kid now. I'm sure you probably have neighbors who would loan you a kid for like so much fun fun things that we've learned today. I thank you so much and I thank everybody for listening to us and thank you all for joining us today and we look forward to speaking with you next week.