Homeschool Zoo Annex

Intensive gardening

I practice organic gardening and intensive gardening in my small vegetable plots. I have crowded my vegetables pretty close together and planted green onions in between many of them to allow for a nice spacing when the green onions are pulled for meals.

Intensive gardening allows your vegetables to crowd out weeds and grass, negates the need for a lot of roto-tilling or hoeing, and helps shade the earth your plants are growing in thus conserving moisture in the soil. Adding mulch or an earth-friendly ground cover adds further moisture protection for the soil while allowing water from the rain or your choice in watering systems to pass through to the plant roots.

The Purdue University Extension Service has written a very informative brochure (HO-124W) about intensive gardening. I've found a lot of helpful tips in it and I figure you will, too. In fact, you can find an amazing number of helpful publications at the Puirdue garden publications site!

As you and your children explore gardening, maybe for the first time, you'll find that even if you only use containers or small areas of your flower beds for a few summer vegetables, the whole family will enjoy the garden. Children will often eat vegetables they've grown themselves that they have declined in the past, so you may want to assign a small area to each child. Caring for plants and harvesting the produce gives a child (or anyone, for that matter) a huge sense of accomplishment and satisfaction. It also doesn't hurt that the food you grow yourself is more nutritious, healthful, and tastier than what you purchase at the grocery store, and you can reduce at least some of your spending.

Many intensive gardening articles recommend the use of a 10-10-10 fertilizer. It's totally up to you. My personal preference is to not use any chemical fertilizers, depend completely on rich compost to feed my gardens. I know this isn't always an option for families.

Labels: Homeschool families, Science

posted by Ann crum @ 1:54 PM