Your child's first flower garden!

How exciting! You've built a wonderful customized bed just for your child, and now you can watch him or her grow and explore with it. Make sure it's filled with good organic soil or compost. As a general rule when picking out soil, the darker the better. Next step, planning your garden!

There are many types of garden themes you can go for. I will go through those in future posts. To start, let's just work with a basic flower garden that is sure to bring a lot of fun and laughter for your child.

Since we are in November, let's work with the best flowers for the season. If you are located in areas that are very cold at this time you will have to help your child start germinating seeds inside. A good way to do this is to buy a small seed germinating tray with a cover that fits on your table. Depending on how cold it gets (i.e. 6 ft tall snow banks) you may not be able to plant in the outdoor bed until it warms up a bit. If that's the case you can still plant a nice little window sill garden in the window of your home with the most sun. You may need to opt for herb seeds instead of flower seeds in this case as well, and make sure your pots are set on a tray of pebbles, marbles, or stones to keep humidity levels high. The next couple of posts will be talking about fun indoor growing projects like these, so keep checking back.

Now let's choose our flowers! Some great cool season flowers that will germinate easily from seed are:


Shirley poppies

NasturtiumsLobelia
Calendula Snapdragons Stock Larkspur

After your child has chosen the flowers he/she would like to grow, it's time to choose the spots to plant in their garden bed. Make sure their plot receives at least 6 hours of full sun especially during the cool seasons.

In order to help the little hands holding onto the little seeds you may want to preadhere the seeds in between small pieces of dampened toilet paper so that it's easier to grab. The toilet paper will degrade in no time and the seed will germinate properly.
Place the seeds directly on the soil surface and for bigger seeds like nasturtiums push them down about 1/4 of an inch. Cover all seeds with a sprinkle of soil, water them in, and watch them sprout within the coming days.


Soon your little one will have the most beautiful flower garden, and the best part is they did it themselves!

Check us out next week when we talk about a fun indoor project perfect for those living in the colder parts of the world!

Also, please send in any photos of your flower gardens and I'll post them on the blog! You can email to gooseberrygardens@gmail.com.

Happy gardening!
Elizabeth