Kids Grow Wild In The Garden

My children have always spent lots of time outdoors because we camp a fair bit. The older children were lucky because they used to camp every other weekend. Because they are teenagers now and busy making their own independent lives we can't get away as much as we'd like, but we can still get out in the garden and play.

When I saw the #KidsGrowWild Challenge I thought it was a brilliant thing to be a part of. I have a vegetable plot in our garden which keeps our slugs well fed all Summer and my children love helping to plant and water, and pick anything which looks remotely ripe! We're lucky because we have a big garden, but it is sadly lacking in beautiful colours because it's mainly easy to care for shrubs.

We applied to take part and a few days later a big box arrived with very exciting contents - a fantastic gardening bag full of children's gardening equipment.

The boys loved the gardening gloves, and the chance to use proper gardening tools like Mummy does!
 

Before I could stop them they'd decided where they thought some seeds should be planted and started digging!

I did point out that it might not be wise, and possibly we should start a little further away from where the lawn mower would be next time boy no.1 cuts the grass!

Inside the bag were 3 packets of flower seeds - Sunflowers, Pansies and a flower mix. They can all be sown directly into the ground, but our slugs are really hungry and there are bazillions of them, so we decided it might give the baby plants a better chance if we started some seeds in trays.

The trays I use are trays from inside Lego Christmas Avent Calendars - which makes them free and recycled, but at £25 each also possibly the most decadent seed trays ever! I made a small hole in the bottom of each section to let out excess water and filled it with compost.

They were both very impressed with how tiny the seeds were and got to work putting one or two in each section of the seed tray. I'm not sure a little fork or trowel was actually essential for this part of the job..

There was a bit of a fight over who got to water the seeds once they were planted, so we came to a compromise....

We decided to sow the mixed seeds directly into the ground among the shrubs, so that hopefully we can add a bit of colour later in the Summer. The seeds were very interesting shapes, textures and colours and the boys liked trying to guess what the flowers from each type will look like.

We prepared the ground and added a bit of compost to give the baby seeds a better chance.

Because of our slug problem I've been saving egg shells to put around plants. Slugs don't like to climb over egg shells because they're sharp, so hopefully it will help deter them from eating so many of our seedlings.

Adding the egg shell was possibly one of the boys favourite jobs - I don't know how successful it will be, only time will tell us that, but fingers crossed.

Once we'd finished there was just the job of giving the seeds a little drink, standing back and admiring our hard work.

In a few weeks time we'll be able to update you with how well we're doing, and hopefully our green shrubbery will have a bit more colour for all of the insects and more nectar for the visiting bees.

This post is an entry for BritMums’ #KidsGrowWild Challenge

We were sent our fabulous Little Pals Children's Gardening Set from Britmums and Money Supermarket in order to take part in this gardening challenge. I think it's gorgeous so I'm including a link - you can buy your own here...