Gardening with Kids When You Don’t Garden – Guest Post at Minnesota Country Girl

I am participating in the blog tour over at Minnesota Country Girl, where I provided a guest post for her series: “Summer in the Outdoors: A Series of Gardening, Foraging, and Nature Studies”

In preparing for writing the post, I was faced with a little bit of a dilemma:

I run. I hike. I love the outdoors, but I am not a gardener. Sure, there was that fluke summer, years ago, where I managed to grow a vegetable garden in my dad’s back yard, and it was successful. I think, though, that my dad may have been behind the scenes helping that garden to boom.

We bought our house wanting to garden. I would really love to put a kids’ garden area in, and it would be awesome to give my kids the skills that, despite my parents’ best efforts, I just didn’t pick up. So, the question is: How does one teach children the skill of gardening when one is not a “green thumb?”

Most of the advice I found for gardening with kids assumes that you already sort of know what you’re doing when it comes to gardening, or at least that you haven’t killed every plant you’ve attempted to grow over the last (mumble) years of adulthood.

To solve this problem, I came up with a way to create a lesson plan and “course” on gardening that would benefit both myself and my kids this summer. I’m really excited about it, and I decided that I would share my planning process in the guest post. I’m a classical homeschooler by nature, so I was already familiar with one of the resources from when my oldest and I tried (and failed at!) gardening when he was 8.

Join me over at Minnesota Country Girl where I have the privilege of guest posting for Summer in the Outdoors: A Series of Gardening, Foraging & Nature Studies.