Fresh produce just can’t be beat. Once you’ve tasted a home grown tomato, you’ll never go back. Happily, my garden is doing great this year. We planted peas, tomatoes, chili peppers, and onions. In a week or so when the peas run out, I’ll be planting a zucchini and a pumpkin. I hope to have a nice large pumpkin ready for carving at Halloween.
Sharon Lovejoy is the author of a few great gardening books and recently I became a giveaway winner of 3 of them, thanks to The Artful Parent. Sunflower Houses, Hollyhock Days, and Roots Shoots Buckets and Boots are just a few of her published books. Sharon’s books focus on incorporating children into the gardening process. There’s tons of fun ideas, making a whimsical garden out of fruit, vegetables, and flowers. Even if you don’t have a “green thumb”, you’ll love these book. Along with great ideas, it takes you through all the basics of getting your garden started.
I love her idea for a Pizza Wheel garden. You shape your garden into a pizza wheel and then plant all the toppings to go on your pizza, like, tomatoes, garlic, basil, peppers, onions, etc. Thanks Sharon, for your gardening inspiration.
What are you growing in your gardens? I need new ideas for next year.
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Hi Marie! Love your blog. I have a kid’s garden for my son and we grow all kinds of things! It’s loosely modeled on some of Sharon Lovejoy’s recommendations from Roots Shoots Buckets and Boots. We have red velvet okra, Sweet 100 tomatoes, birdhouse gourds, Japanese Hulless popcorn (lots of small ears on one stalk with pink silk!), Partridge Head pole beans growing on a teepee, and tons of herbs like basil, dill, fennel and parsley. We have sunflowers, violas, johnny jump ups, zinnias and marigolds. I’ll try to take a picture for my blog soon, it is huge now!
I have a teeny-tiny yard, so I don’t have room to grow much. Usually I just have an herb garden, and some catnip for our 2 cats. This year I couldn’t find a lot of the herbs I wanted, so I only have chives, basil, cilantro, and lavender. I’d love to have my own vegetable garden, but I go to the farmer’s market to get fresh produce.
Good Morning Marie! My son also enjoys gardening! We are pretty simple… we stick to tomatoes and herbs. He loves to watch the cherry tomatoes and pick them when they are red! This year he was also interested in helping me plant my flowers too. His new favorite color (next to blue!) is purple. He picked out his own purple flowers and planted them.
Here are some of my favorite books:
Flower Garden by Eve Bunting and Kathryn Hewitt
Planting a Rainbow by Lois Ehlert
Waiting for Wings by Lois Ehlert
I’ll have to check out your book suggestions! Thanks!
hey, I love that book; we tried the sunflower house last year; but our critters in our yard ate everything it would’ve been cool if they hadn’t; everything came up and got like 3 feet tall and then one morning we went out and the tops were all gone; it was sad. so this year we have just some herbs and tomatoes in pots on the deck, but we’d like to make a little fenced in area for a garden. yours looks great.
These books sound great. I want to start a garden area for my kids so I am going to see if I can find these books to get some inspiration.
I am hoping to get some pumpkins in this year too. My gardening has been less than stellar this year.
Fantastic Blog and your garden looks great
Always fun to meet kindred spirits.
We raised our family truck farming and I have re-entered the arena of gardening.
Join us on our Video voyage regarding gardening
The Green garden behind the Barn
and
Growing Tomatoes for Health and Wealth
We actually are supplementing income and of course enjoying the benefits of exercise and the produce
Thank you
Chuck
I agree with you on never going back to supermarket food once you have grown your own. I hope the enthusiasm continues for growing your vegetables and fruits.
Homegrown tomatoes are the best! We don’t have a good spot for planting, so I got huge pots and planted in them. I keep them on my back porch where they get plenty of light and my tomato plants are huge! We have already eaten a few and look forward to many more!
Mmmmmm Fresh Gardeny goodness… We have a lot of PURPLE in our vegi garden. Purple Carrots, Purple Beans, Purple Cabage… all sorts of tomatoes… and Chioga Beets. They taste like regular beets, but they have a bull’s eye effect inside with white and red rings. Also grow lemon cucumber and pattypan squash instead of the “regular” kind. The kids LOVE eating our strange garden. I also planted my garden in our front yard this year. Took up the lawn, and put garden in!
We love to grow low-maintenance garden plants like cucumbers, squash, lettuce, carrots, etc. The carrots can be harvested all the way into wintertime which makes it really fun for the kids to see the long-lasting benefits of their work. And you would not believe the yummy things, kid-friendly foods that can be made with squash!
I own all of these books and I love them!
Since we just moved in the only thing I got around to was some herbs but the one we are really having fun with is our sunflowers. We plan to use the seeds to make bird feeders in the fall. Your garden looks great!
We love to grow giant sunflowers, just for the sheer joy of watching them grow inches per day.
My “can’t live withouts” are tomatoes, of course, and basil. Yum! My kids would eat green pasta (pesto) every day!
Great gardens everyone. Thanks for sharing. One thing I do want to grow next year is Sunflowers for sure. They’ll add some whimsy to the yard.