Gardening with Toddlers

We bought our house in February with snow covering the lawn.  After we moved in and the snow melted, we noticed that we inherited a rather large garden (25' x 37').  My husband and I do not have green thumbs but we decided to give it a try.  The first summer we just threw some seeds in the garden and were very surprised at what a great harvest we had in the fall!  Over the years we have refined our gardening skills and this year I decided to really involve the twins.  First, I decided that I needed to "define" the areas where seeds were growing so the girls would not step on them.  I bought two packs of bamboo sticks for 2 dollars each and used craft string to create "beds" and set up the sticks and string kinda like caution tape around each bed.  I planted when the girls were napping one day (you will see why if you keep reading!).  I also decided to plan and create a "Pea and Bean tepee" for the girls.  For this, I found four long wooden pieces of lumber in our shed and Adam screwed them together to create a tepee.  I planted pea and bean seeds around each leg of the tepee.  I am hoping by the end of the summer the plants will grow up each piece of lumber to create a green tepee for the girls to play in!  Another thing we tried in our garden this year was the traditional planting method known as "Three Sisters".  You can read about it here:  http://www.reneesgarden.com/articles/3sisters.html
Here is a picture of just one fourth of our garden.  You can see the bamboo sticks I used to hold up the string to "define" the area I didn't want the girls stepping in.  I also used some of the sticks for the garden signs. Pictures of the tepee and "Three Sisters" are coming when things really start growing!  Please ignore my weeds and dog!

Garden signs
To help the girls understand what was going to grow in our garden (and to help me remember what I planted and where!), I had the girls help me make garden signs.  I used craft foam and cut vegetable shapes.  The girls helped glue eyes on each vegetable and I hot glued them on stakes that Adam found in the shed for me

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The Kids Garden
I saved a spot in our garden where I set up a low table using an old board that I spray painted blue and some bricks.  I  put some pots of dirt, gardening tools and packets of seeds on it for the girls to use as a gardening table.  I also added some colorful pin wheels.  They love to transfer the dirt from one pot to another (great pouring skill practice) and practice planting the seeds! This area also keeps the girls entertained when I need to go weed the garden!

Outdoor Garden Sensory Table
Another fun area we have in the backyard is a garden sensory table.  I created this by spray painting an old board and putting it on some bricks to create a low table.  I added some flower pots that I wasn't using and filled them with child's sized garden gloves, seed packets and candle-shaped flowers.  Another old tin pot has plastic flowers that the girls like to stick into the dirt and the old muffin tin holds the chalk for the chalkboard.  I also added a pair of plastic tweezers and some seeds for fine motor practice!