EATING FOR BEAUTY ~ GROWING YOUR OWN FOOD

We were lucky enough to have a great guest at our meeting.  We had Nick who is Nikki's uncle come visit us.  He works as the manager at Home Depo in the gardening department and knows a lot about plants and how to grow your own food.

He volunteered to come teach us how to grow our own garden. 
Since we had this great opportunity, I thought it would be perfect to have the girls work on the Eating for Beauty Badge. 

First there was a little bit of a history lesson.  We learned about Victory Gardens and the gardens at the White House. 

Since we are going to be going DC this year it will be fun to see the garden that the President has had planted at the White House.

We headed outside so the girls could actually get their hands dirty and learn while doing, which is always more fun then learning from books alone.

They learned about the different type of soils and which kind is better to plant in.

They learned how to test the soil to see what kind it is.  If it rolls into a ball easily it is clay.  If it fall apart without making a ball at all, it's sandy.  If it sort of makes a ball but still falls apart it is a mixture and the best kind for planting vegetables in.

They learned how to fix soil to make it better.  They learned how to add conditioners to make the soil healthy and to use mulch to help keep the moisture in.

They didn't just stand around and hear or see how it is done.  They actually did the hard labor and picked up the heavy bags and spread it around.  They did a great job too.

They racked everything out smoothly.

Since we were limited on our time, they did get lucky and didn't have to turn the soil over to mix everything in.  Nick was nice enough to do that for them.

After the soil was all turned and everything mixed in.  The girls then had to smooth out everything, get rid of any clumps and pulled out any roots that may have been popping up.

They learned the proper way to get plants out of the pots without hurting them.

Nick explained how to check the roots to make sure they were not root bound.

Then it was time to do the actual planting.  This was the part they all enjoyed the most.

They planted herbs (rosemary and peppermint).

They also planted Brussels sprouts, red chard and lettuce.

Getting their hands in the soil and knowing they were planting food to enjoy later was a lot of fun!

Nick then had them plant some garlic bulbs.  They thought it was interesting that you could pull apart a head of garlic and use the cloves to grow more garlic.

They learned how to read the plants and bulbs to see how far apart they needed to be planted and how much sun was needed.

Everyone was also given a chart to show which months you should plant which vegetables.  This was great because they got to see how to have a garden going all year long and not just in the summer.

The last thing they planted was onions.  They planted white, red and yellow onions. 

They were very excited about their garden and are looking forward to watching it grow over the next several weeks.

They loved doing all the work getting the garden going.  Nikki agreed that since the garden was in her backyard, she would be responsible for watering.

Each meeting we will go out and check on everything and make sure it's all growing well.  Soon everyone will be able to harvest what was planted. 

They all agreed it's always more fun to eat what you grow yourself.  Planting healthy food is a great way to make sure you are going to be able to eat good food.

Good food, helps keep bodies healthy and a healthy body is a beautiful body!

Thank you Nick for a great and very informative meeting!