Ode to the beach (winter version)

When someone says “beach” the first things that come to mind are often summer, sunshine, swimming and ice cream. I love all of the things, but this winter I found a new appreciation for the winter beach experience.

A multigenerational team of explorers (aka my extended family) discovered that the winter beach offers streams to fjord, sand banks to slide on, endless rocks to chuck and treasures of beach glass to hunt for—all without getting a sun burn.

Our time exploring the winter beach-scape were some of my favourite moments of the holidays. There was a big storm that entirely changed the streams and sand banks overnight. We went on a night walk exploring the beach with flashlights, a big hit since we rarely experience real dark and a sky full of stars. With my kids approaching 5 and 2 1/2 it made me wonder what kind of memories they may make from these places and experiences.

For many adults when we reflect on our dearest childhood memories nature often plays a role—being outside in a thunderstorm, the quietness of a lake during an early morning fishing trip or the sweet smell of wildflowers in the heat of the summer. I’m sure you can vividly re-call a few of your own childhood nature experiences.

If you’re reading this blog, you probably are well aware that today’s kids have far fewer opportunities to play freely outside as we did: compared to the 1970s, American children now spend 50 percent less time in unstructured outdoor activities* and this finding is pretty consistent across Canada and the UK. I can’t help but feel saddened by this fact, because in my heart of hearts I think most kids are happiest when they are outside freely playing. In fact, I think most people are happiest that way.

Playing on the winter beach was a good reminder of how simple it can be to get outside. Fresh air, water, rocks, logs and unstructured time. A perfect counterbalance to the more frenzied side of the holidays. Will my kids remember these beach experiences? I don’t know. But their contentment in the moment suggests that they appreciate it enough right now to make it worthwhile. I’m pretty sure all of the adults present will be holding onto these memories for years to come too 🙂

What are some of your favourite winter places to get outside?

 

A summer hide out for your sweetest peas

Hello and Happy Earth Day everyone! A special hello if you’ve just joined us.

I had the opportunity last week to share garden advice with yoyomama readers and many new folks are joining us on these weekly posts. Hooray! Welcome! This is a great day (and time of year) to get inspired about all things green, growing, outdoors and adventurous.

This week, as an Earth Day tribute, I’m sharing this how-to project for making your own little people summer hide out. This project can be adapted to work in a garden, lawn or balcony and it’s the perfect way to get yourself and your kidlets into the garden. Easy, fragrant, edible and irresistible all in one.

Expanding on the classic idea of bean tee-pees, we’re going to make a roomier version with more plant diversity. Here’s what you’ll need and how-to do it:

• 5 to 8 long poles (bamboo works well)
• Twine, string or rubber connectors to tie the poles together
• Net or string to go between the poles
• Your choice of seeds for climbing plants
  •  Sweet pea flowers
  • Nasturtium flowers
  • Pole or runner beans
  • Climbing varieties of snap or shelling peas

Prepare the soil where the poles will be pressed into the ground. If your tee pee is on the lawn, remove grass and dig in compost, a little lime will help too. If you’re doing this in the garden or in containers on a balcony, mix in compost and prepare the beds/containers as you would for any new seeds.

Arrange the poles in a tee-pee shape, so that you have enough space in the centre for a few small people to comfortably gather.

Tie the tops together with string or use these handy rubber connectors that you can find at your local garden store. To ensure your vines have plenty of places to climb you can also string a net or string between the poles.

To grow a green oasis that provides flowers, fragrance, nourishment and plenty of leafy greens for shade and shelter choose a mix of seeds:

Sweet peas will provide you with lovely flowers that you can cut again and again for bouquets and play. There are many varieties of sweet peas in all sorts of colours, the ones with larger flowers have less scent so I prefer heritage varieties, like Matacuna, that have an incredible fragrance.

Nasturiums are another climbing flower that produces edible flowers in abundance and has large leaves that are perfect for green hideouts.

Pole beans and runner beans are how bean tee-pees got their start. Scarlet runner beans have bright flowers and are rampant growers. Their beans are less preferred for culinary purposes, but for snacking right off the vine they will be just fine. Adding pole beans—my daughter has already picked out a purple variety—will provide another nutritious snack that you will want to harvest for dinner too. If you’re in a cooler climatic zone (like Canada or the midwest) wait until May to plant your bean seeds.

There are many varieties of snap peas and shelling peas, some grow on short vines and some climb high, so make sure you choose ones that will grow to 6′ or higher for your tee pee. Peas are another favourite among the little gardener set to eat right off the vine or harvest for meals.

Plant your seeds the depth and spacing recommended on the packets (about 1/2″ depth and a few inches apart) and mix the types of seeds as you plant around the tee-pee or plant the nasturtiums as an outer ring as they’ll happily ramble at ground level. Water, wait, weed if necessary, and as plants begin to grow you can help place them on the netting and poles to guide them upward.

If you only do one garden project with kids this year let this be the one. A growing, green hideout lush with fragrant flowers and crisp peas and beans is the best place imaginable to nurture the dreams of little plant lovers. Every day will be Earth Day with this hide out.

If you try out this project please share photos as you go along. I’ll share mine too.

Have ideas of what you’d like to do next? Share your ideas and questions and I’ll talk about them in future posts.

Enjoy the day! And say a little thanks to our green earth.

Hello Soil, Nice to meet you

Greetings!

Now that the weather is warming up, so are the soils. It’s time to get out there and dig in the dirt. There is no better way to get acquainted (or reacquainted) with your garden than doing a few simple soil tests.

Go ahead, roll up your sleeves and embrace your inner scientist. Scientists of any age will make a few new discoveries with these investigations.

1. Worm party

One of the best indicators of healthy soil is the size of the worm party that you find when you dig into it. First, examine the soil surface for worm castings (tiny worm manure) and burrow holes. Then, dig out about 6 inches of soil and count the number of worms squirming on your shovel. Three worms are good company; five are a party. No worms means you need to bust out the snacks and add organic matter to your soil so your worm friends have something to feed on.

Worms are the best
Worms aerate the soil to improve water infiltration and their tiny castings (worm poo) infuse the soil with enzymes, bacteria, organic matter and plant nutrients that help your plants grow stronger and faster.

Worm buffet
To encourage a worm party in your garden lay out a nice spread of organic matter. In the fall, I cover my garden beds with leaves to protect the soil from the heavy rains (and rains and rains) and give the worms something to eat over the winter. In the spring, you can add things that will break down more quickly–coffee grounds (an abundant urban resource), lawn clippings or composted manure all work well. My 80 year-old neighbour who has an AMAZING garden digs all of his vegetable scraps straight into his garden beds. There is definitely a wild worm party going on under his incredible tomato and bean plants.

2. The main squeeze

To figure out what your soils are made of just give ’em a squeeze. There are three general soil classifications: clay, sandy, or loamy. Clay is nutrient rich, but slow draining. Sand is quick draining, but has trouble retaining nutrients and moisture. Loam is the most enviable of soils–it retains moisture and nutrients but doesn’t stay soggy.

To determine your type of soil, take a handful of moist (but not wet) soil from your garden and give it a firm squeeze.

Open your hand, does it?

1. Hold its shape and crumble when you gently poke it. Congratulations your main squeeze is a loam!
2. Hold its shape and when poked stays firm. You’ve got a clay soil.
3. Fall apart as soon as you open your hand.
   Fetch the beach blanket, you’ve got sandy soil.

If you don’t have the perfect loam don’t despair, lay out the worm buffet of organic matter and it will improve. If you have very sandy or clay rich soil then you might want to consider adding peat moss for a quick injection of organic matter.

3. Shake it up

The squeeze test gives you a basic idea of your soil composition. If you want to get slightly more scientific, grab a straight-sided jar with a tight fitting lid, your shovel and dig a hole 6 inches deep. Fill the jar with about a cup of soil removing any sticks, worms or stones that sneak in there.

Add a little bit of dish soap (a few squirts of liquid soap or a tablespoon of powder will do), fill the jar with water, put on the lid and shake, shake, shake for about 3 minutes. Everyone can get involved.

All of the shaking lets the soap separate the soil particles for a more accurate test (this is totally scientific, wait till you see the chart below). Once you’re done shaking, set the jar on a flat surface where it can rest for a day or two while the soil particles slowly settle into layers.

The sand particles are the heaviest and will settle to the bottom in about a minute. Silt is the next heaviest particle and will settle out after about an hour. You can distinguish between the two because the silt layer is darker than the sand. Clay, the lightest particle in the mix, can take from one to two days to settle out. It will be fine textured and light in color.

This is when we get really scientific.

To figure out the percentages of sand, silt and clay in your soil sample measure the total amount of sediment (aka soil) with a ruler once it has all settled out. The total amount (say, 3 inches) represents 100 percent of the soil sample. To determine the percentages of sand, silt and clay measure each layer and divide by the amount of the total sample. Then, use the time-tested Soil Texture Triangle and see how your soil measures up in the classification.

Notice the sweet LOAM spot in the centre. Ah, soil perfection. But don’t fret if you’re off-centre, just note your soil type, add organic matter and adjust your watering to match your soil. Sandy soils are going to need more frequent watering, clay soils tend to get waterlogged so will be slower to warm in spring and can be over-watered, but they’re nutrient rich.

If the soil in different parts of your garden seem more sandy or clay-y than others you may want to do a test for each area.

4. pH(at) test

Okay, you’ve squeezed, you’ve shaken, you’ve hosted a worm party, here is one more important test to try–a pH test. If you live on the west coast all of the winter rains have probably made your soil acidic (the water leaches out key nutrients that keep your soil from becoming acidic). Most plants are happiest with a well-balanced soil of 7 or 6.5. This is the pH level where the most nutrients are available–at pH 7.5 or higher your soil is alkaline, 6 or below it is acidic.

You can buy a very simple and inexpensive pH test kit at most garden or hardware stores, it’s quick and fun to conduct a little chemistry. The one I have cost less than $10 and with the magic of a secret powder, more shaking and a few minutes resting time it gives me the colour-coded answer of my soil pH.

Once you know your pH you can amend your garden (or garden plans) accordingly. Some plants–blueberries, foxgloves, azaleas, heather, and strawberries–prefer acidic soil. If you want to grow other fruits, vegetables or flowers you can add dolomite limestone or even finely crushed eggshells to increase the calcium and balance out the acidity.

Alright, good luck.

May your soils be rich and see you next week for more gardening fun.

Wondrous things from seeds

Keep on sowing your seed for you never know which will grow–perhaps it all will.

–Albert Einstein

Any opportunity to follow some advice from Albert Einstein seems like a good addition to daily life. This week’s post is about a few simple seeds you can sow for near-guaranteed abundance. Because yes, the time of garden abundance is beginning here in the northern hemisphere.

To start, let’s check in on those peas we planted during the first project. They’ve been in the garden a while now and are getting tall! The first pea pods are ready for picking with promise of many more to come. I offered my gardening partner first dibs on the first pea of the season. Since then I’ve had repeated requests of “peas!” when we walk by the garden and we hunt for all the pods we can find. If you haven’t planted peas yet, or even if you are already enjoying the first pods of the season, it’s time to sow more! Plant another little row wherever you can find space and they’ll grow up quick and give you a second harvest of peas right when your first ones start to slow down.

I can’t take credit for this, but my housemate has grown a beautiful fava forest that I am going to need to replicate next year. You can think of fava beans as the southern European version of edamame. Fresh fava beans can be boiled and eaten the same way you’d prepare the kid-pleasing Japanese beans. They grow easily and as part of the legume family are good for your soil (they make more nitrogen available for future plantings).

Here’s something I love to grow–kale. Recently awarded superfood status kale is a rising star of the veggie world. It grows like crazy on the westcoast and will stay green and healthy all winter only to resume growing again in spring. If the end-times come, or just lean times, you’ll want some kale in your garden.

I’m a fan of fresh picked kale leaves as a standard for salads, but my daughter has not taken to kale (or lettuce for that matter) in fresh leaf form. But we just had a huge turning point: now she loves to pick kale (all by herself of course) and immediately she voluntarily started nibbling on it straight from the garden. I was amazed, kids will really eat what they help grow. If you want to get your family asking for second helpings of kale try making kale chips. I follow this simple preparation and add a little grated Parmesan cheese on top before baking.

Kale seeds are a great thing to start in your early spring garden because they like the cool weather, but don’t be afraid to plant them later in the year too. If you sow kale in July you’re guaranteed to have a kale harvest right into the cool months.

Last, but not least, the mighty pole beans are just starting to climb their trellis. In a month’s time we’ll have a bean tunnel marking the entrance to one of our garden pathways. It’s not too late, plant some pole beans now and unleash the jack-and-the-beanstalk power of these vigorous climbers.

We’re keeping it simple with seeds this week, but there is more excitement in store. Farmers have been sending me their info about kid-friendly, organic u-picks and I’ve gathered up a bunch of farm camps for youth and kids over here. I swear all of these farm camp opportunities are fairly new, this growing things thing is really catching on 🙂

Grab a packet of seeds and sow them anywhere you can… perhaps they will all grow. See you next week.

Ready, set, grow!

Welcome to gardening season, full on.

As mentioned last week, now is the time everyone in North America can garden with reckless abandon. Snow and frost are behind us and the nights are warming up–that’s what makes the plants grow.

Because it’s time to be outside more than on the computer I am going to keep this post short and sweet, but aim to inspire.

This is your chance to try your hand at veggie gardening no matter how little time, space or gardening experience you have.

Right now you don’t even need to go near a gardening store to pick up some starter vegetable plants–they are popping up everywhere from the grocery store to the farmers’ market. The serious gardeners in my neighbourhood, mainly older European and Asian folk, have been swarming their favourite spot for vegetable starts for a few weeks now. I know it’s gardening season when you can’t get by on the sidewalk by this otherwise, other-times-of-year, nondescript green grocer.

Carting plants home seems to be a favourite activity for toddlers, so take advantage of the help and grab a few. Unless you have a very large garden there are many plants where you’re further ahead to buy starter plants than to start them from seed (you’ll save money, time and likely have stronger plants). For example, two zucchini plants will feed your family and friends, if you grew a whole package of zucchini seeds you could feed the neighbourhood.

Here are some great vegetables to start with already-grown up seedlings (simply known as “starts” in gardener-speak) instead of seeding them yourself:

– Tomatoes, especially cherry varieties for kids

– Cucumbers

– Zucchini

– Pumpkins

– Herbs of all kinds (except cilantro, they don’t like to be transplanted)

– Strawberries

– Marigold flowers to deter pests

While I tend to get excited about buying plants at the farmers’ market, they seem to look healthier and I like to glean gardening advice from the vendors, I conducted a little tomato experiment last year where I bought half of my plants from the farmers’ market (at about $3.50/plant) and half from the local green grocer (at $0.50/plant). I treated all the tomatoes well and kept them safe from rain under a plastic covering and by the end of the season all of the plants were taller than me and I had more tomatoes than I knew what to do with–and trust me, I can eat a lot of fresh-from-the-vine tomatoes. The plants were indistinguishable.

So, if you’re feeling a little empty in the wallet or you don’t want to invest a lot in your early gardening efforts go ahead and stop by the green grocer (but follow the crowds) and invest $5 for a few starter plants. Put them in good soil and water them well to get them established, then let the warm summer nights do the rest. The beginnings of an under $5 strawberry patch is included here as evidence of a lazy, but fruitful (ha ha), approach to gardening.

Of course if you have more time, ambition and energy for growing, don’t hold back. I have to admit that despite my tomato experiment I still couldn’t resist buying some plants from the farmers’ market this year–but come summer I’m going to have purple and green zebra striped tomatoes!

Starting with a combination of plant starts and seeds can also be a good way to keep kids engaged in the garden, the plants give them something more visible to watch right away while they wait for their seeds to sprout.

Now comes the inspiration. Check out this video of a LA family’s first year at a community garden and be ready to be inspired by what new gardeners can create in a single season.

These guys are on my heroes list.

A Year in the Garden from Brad Hiebert on Vimeo.

See you next week for more gardening fun!