Gardening with a 3 year old | National Gardening Week 30th April – 6th May 2018

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We love gardening, being outside and just plain exploring the world we live in. That might sound a bit like in some crazy parent on a mission, always trying to teach, always trying to encourage H to learn. I suppose I am in a sense, but mostly, she is. If she’s not asking why why why? If she’s not constantly asking how to do something or how to draw something, she’s in her own world of imaginative play. She’s just become interested in bugs, and even picking up snails – shock horror, this is a girl who says before ran screaming at anything that remotely might be able to move.

We did a lot of gardening and planting last week in the gorgeous sunny weather. It was bliss and to be honest we all felt so much better, so much happier. The fresh air did wonders for us but also our plants! We have tomatoes, strawberries, cucumbers and gerkin cucumbers growing and now have lettuces and carrots also growing on the window sill.

Being three, H is constantly curious, which is brilliant as we watch the plants grow and change. Seeds below the surface, poke up, grow leaves, grow more leaves, flowers and fruits to come.

We were asked to take part in National Gardening Week running from 30th April until 6th May 2018. GBC Group kindly sent us some seeds, marker sticks and kids gardening equipment to get H started gardening, and also the book The Hungry Catepillar. We’ve been reading the book and talking about how our seeds will grow, how they will become each fruit and veg. It’s so simple, but a great way to get little ones involved in gardening.

We also bought a few extra plants which H requested – cucumbers, a gerkin cucumber (she requested we grow gerkins… so we’ll have to see how this turns out!) and, a blueberry bush. We also already had a lot of strawberry plants from last year (strawberry plays come back each year!), so we’re really going to be ‘living the good life‘ this summer!

Here are a few pics of our planting fun:

Do follow me over on Instagram as I’ll be following our plants journeys there… let’s see how many survive! My usual philosophy is to plant as many seeds as possible and some have to survive! Usually he tomatoes and strawberries do ok. We even had some tomatoes from the ‘green house’ (aka huge green plastic monstrosity) last November!

Fingers crossed this year is as successful.

Unfortunately this greenhouse didn’t survive the winter winds, so we’ll just need to get a new greenhouse to have any potential for such a late crop. The good life, here we come!

I’ll be doing a few gardening/outdoor posts this week for #nationalgardeningweek as this is something we just love. Kids playing outside all year, is the way it should be!