Teaching the Kids to Weed
Today's lesson in gardening was to be teaching the kids how to weed, preparing a nice bed in which to plant peas. The proposed pea patch will be on one side of what is an eye-shaped garden (I think it was supposed to be more rounded but it needs re-edging), where it will hopefully get enough sun at least part of the day to grow peas. If we get to eat some of these peas that will be great, but I also have in mind using this method to enrich the soil in that area to plant something later (yet to be determined). I had read somewhere that peas put nitrogen into the soil.
Here are pictures of my little helpers. Unfortunately, agreeing to pose for a picture was about all the help they were willing to give, and Mommy did most of the weeding.
They all have their own kid-friendly garden tools now, even the 16-month-old:
Those plastic hand-held cultivators (which I usually just call "claws") are useless for weeding even when trying to pull out something as close to the surface as Creeping Charlie, of which we have way more than our fair share.
This little "helper" was no help at all, but sat and posed right on cue when I said smile:
Actually, my son was helpful by dumping pail-fulls of weeds into the compost pile. He just refused to get into the actually pulling of them, though. And my 4 year old is in a phase where she will do almost nothing I ask. Well, whatever the lack of assistance and questionable learning to weed that went on, we had a nice day together.
There is a lot of work to do out there. But I think we may actually be able to get a start on planting that pea patch tomorrow. I bought some yellow plastic tent stakes from Wal-Mart for just over $2 which should be great for helping mark the rows with string. I can't decide, though, if we should do plain old straight rows, or something more in keeping with the curved shape of the bed. Maybe a slightly curving straight row or two. (Depends how many peas I have to plant.)
One thing I can say for sure: it was great to get outside. Not too much insect life out there yet, no mosquitos until the sun started setting. By weeding this bed (which we had barely touched last year), I even discovered some little shoots of Hostas emerging beneath the carpet of Creeping Charlie. There may be hope for my perennials yet!
