My three boys love to wander through the Enabling Gardens in Altoona. These gardens are designed, planted, and maintained by Iowa State Master Gardeners. Our community is blessed to have such a beautiful space. Whenever we visit, the boys first check out the garden with the miniature furniture and ornery gnomes (because they’re always moving); it’s Jude’s mission to create such a garden next year. Then we make our way to the Children’s Garden where they play the conga drums and the marimbas, and they balance themselves on a path made of wooden blocks. There’s a sand pit to get dirty in, and a life-sized stick tee pee.

Tonight, the Master Gardeners sponsored a Children’s Art night. I invited two friends, Grandma, and my sister and her two kids to join us. We had a blast! There were so many amazing projects for the kids:

1. Chia heads: The boys stuffed pantyhose with grass seed and dirt. Then they picked out googly eyes, and the gardeners tied a nose. Wild hairdos to come!
2. Handmade flowers: Hands were traced, decorated, and cut out. The fingers were curled, and the hands were taped to a straw. These flowers are now in a vase on my kitchen table.
3. Pressed flower sun catchers: Leaves of all shapes and textures, and red, orange, yellow, and pink petals were pressed onto a sheet of sticky paper. The boys made beautiful patterns before another clear sheet was placed on top. These will hang in their bedroom windows.
4. Wildflower arranging: Each child selected a vase, decorated with a strip of fun patterned duct tape. Then they picked flowers and grasses from buckets. Master gardeners helped them arrange a masterpiece of natural beauty!
5. Butterfly collage: Cut-outs of wings, heads, and bodies – with many colorful patterns – were pasted onto a page and matted. Presto! A work of art for a bedroom wall.
6. Wooden animals: A master gardener made and donated playful, creative wood statues of animals and birdhouses for the kids to paint. Wow! Rex and Jude selected a cat with toothpick whiskers. Morris selected a bunny with a heart. These will decorate each boy’s garden. 

We left with a wonderful collection of art, each piece special because they were handmade by the boys. Thank you Master Gardeners!

Jude’s corn is now over eight feet tall! Here’s a comparison from the beginning of June, July, and August.

The boys never disappoint when I ask them to tell me something new about their gardens. I usually learn something. For example, I didn’t know about the cats… Gross.

“I have a lot of green beans. Some are long and some are little. That’s it. My tomato is getting red and I’m saving it. It’s getting ready to eat.” (Morris)

“I have a good egg plant. We just made some pickles with my cucumbers. The cats have stopped pooping in my garden.” (Jude)

“My peppermint plant has vines all the way to the cucumber plant. My chili reds are getting red; my chili reds got eaten by something…” (Rex)

Jude’s cucumbers are hogging the vegetable drawer of our fridge and something needs to be done with them. So, we made refrigerator dill pickles!

I did the chopping. Jude did the filling and the pouring. Together, we made six jars of dill pickles. A few had carrots, green beans, and cauliflower were added for variety.

Here’s our recipe:

6 cucumbers speared

3 cups water

1 cup white vinegar

1 tablespoon sugar

1 tablespoon salt

2 garlic cloves, sliced

6 sprigs dill

Directions:

1. Fill jars with cucumbers, garlic, and dill.
2. Combine water, vinegar, sugar and salt in a pan over high heat. Bring to a boil. Remove from heat when salt and sugar dissolve.
3. Pour vinegar mixture over cucumber mixture.
4. Seal with a lid and refrigerate for at least one week. Keeps for 4 months.

We did it! Jude has already given one jar to Grandpa, and one jar is reserved for Mrs. Toby, his former first grade teacher.

Good job, Jude!

We’ve been curious about how much money a garden can make, or save a family. If we keep track of what we harvest, we’ll have a better understanding of whether we make our money back, and then what the value is for all that harvesting. We originally spent about $110 on plants and seeds.

Here’s what we’ve harvested so far, and the value we calculated. By the way, I’m having Jude add these up. Good practice for addition with decimals!

	Cost at Store	Harvested	Value
Cucumbers	$1.00	17	$17.00
Green beans	$2.69 / 1.35 lbs.	4.19 lbs.	$8.34
Tomatoes
-Roma	$.25 each	18	$4.50
-Cherry	$3.79 / 0.95 lbs.	65 / 1.5 lbs.	$3.80
-Big	$1.50 each	3	$4.50
Jalapenos/Chilies	$0.30 each	1	$0.30

Basil – $1.99/pkg. (fresh) —6– $11.94    

Chives – $2.99/.75 oz. (fresh) –None (Just nibbled in the garden)

Cilantro – $1.00/bunch (fresh)– 2– $2.00

Dill – $1.70/.58 oz. (dried)– 3– $5.10

*  TOTAL VALUE (as of 8/4)  = $57.48

*The herbs are winding down- except for the basil – so I did not add them to the chart. There are many tomatoes, cucumbers, and beans to come.

Today is a great day to harvest! There are many cherry tomatoes to pluck, two giant cucumbers need pulled because they threaten vine stability, and green beans are everywhere!

So, I sent my boys a-picking, and we had a bountiful harvest:

2 cucumbers

85 green beans

30 cherry tomatoes

8 roma tomatoes

Great growing, Boys!

Sooo…with so many cucumbers, I thought the boys might like to make cucumber salad, a classic summer salad. Rex and Jude wanted to slice their own cucumbers and take some credit for it as we were taking it to an aunt and uncle’s for supper AND it’s one of their grandpa’s favorite.

We used the following recipe:

4 cucumbers thinly sliced

1 small onion thinly sliced (or 4 tiny ones, in our case)

1 cup white vinegar

½ cup water

¾ cup white sugar

1 tbsp dill

1 tbsp pepper

2 very careful boys (who have never used sharp knives before)

1 very calm mother (who has never let her boys use sharp knives before)

They did it (without any fingers sliced!)! It was delicious! And Rex was especially proud as his grandfather oohed and aahed and said it was one of the best cucumber salads he’s ever had.

At age 4, Morris is more involved in gardening than you might think. One of his daily chores is to water the garden, and he does it well! Every square, every plant shows signs of showers when he’s done, so I trust him with this job, even though I was uncertain about giving him this responsibility at first.

Last night, he had quite the harvest. When we took an evening stroll after playing soccer in the yard, Morris said to his dad, “Look at the action in my garden!” By “action” he meant all the growing green beans. He pointed to various areas repeating, “Look at this action!” and “that action!”

As he picked, he called his green beans “guys,” as in, “Look at this guy!” as he pulled a bean off the vine, and “Look at that guy!”

He was so proud of the hand full of beans he brought into the house, and he quickly grabbed a tape measure – as he’s seen me do – to measure his longest on his own: 7 ½ inches! He holds the record, and boy, is our little guy proud.

Boys love competition. They will race to the top of the stairs, see who can put on their shoes the fastest, run to tag a parent first (This one always surprises me, as a “tag” usually has a lot of Boy Force behind it.), kick the first soccer goal, empty the dishwasher rack, the list goes on and on…

So, I thought we could add a little competition with our cucumbers that are growing in abundance: the most, the longest, the fattest, the heaviest, the prickliest, the most unique… Lots of possibilities here for each boy to win several times.

Jude harvested eight – Eight! – last night. Before he started, we had no idea there were so many. Like he said earlier, cucumbers are sneaky. They sprout quickly, and some of his were even hiding in the tomato cage.

Right now Jude holds the record for the longest at 8 -1/2″! Rex might have him beat for the fattest and heaviest though.

	Picked	On the Vine	Contest Contender   -Longest-
Rex	4	3	7”
Jude	8	4	8 ½”

There’s a lot of lovely green in our gardens, but when we got home from a family wedding this weekend we saw RED and PURPLE! Several Roma and Early Girl tomatoes were turning reddish-orange, and the body of the first eggplants were peeking out purple. It was exciting to see such colorful changes.

 

Morris also found several record-breaking pole beans in his garden. Check out these guys!