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Extension Master GardenerSM Volunteers of Buncombe County

Gardening for Children

Kids Post: Planning your garden!

 

Do you have a vegetable garden? Do you know what you want to grow in your garden this year? Now is this time to choose! What do you like to eat? What would you like to try? Some crops are early, and you’ll get to eat them soon—like peas and radishes. Others will take more time, like tomatoes and pumpkins. Choose crops carefully and you’ll have food to eat all summer long!

Where to find ideas:

  • Seed catalogs (paper copies you may receive in the mail or online catalogs) are a great place to start—look at the pictures and find your favorites and maybe something new to try. Think about including some flowers to attract pollinators!
  • Black Mountain Library Sowing Circle is one community resource that has information and a seed-saving library you can visit during regular library hours.

How to decide!

Check on how much space your plants will take: how big is your garden plot or how much space do you have for container gardening? If you are gardening for the first time, pick a sunny spot that is easy to water. Test the soil now and fertilize and lime as directed!

  • Look at what you’d like to grow and figure how much ground or what size container will you need to grow this crop. Many crops need more than one plant for pollination and/or to produce enough to eat. Most vining plants need a lot of space or some kind of vertical support.
  • Make a map of where you’ll put each crop or container. Outdoors you can have fun doing some quick measurements—measure your shoe with a ruler or yardstick and then walk around your garden area to figure how may “feet” your garden area measures!

  • Make a map of your garden

Planning to plant

Can you put seeds directly in the garden? When? If you need to set out plants, do you have time and space to grow the plants to set out, or will you buy transplants?

  • If you want to start your own plants, read the seed-growing instructions and count back from the last frost date (you can use May 10 as a rough date for Buncombe County) to know when to plant for indoor starts.
  • Make a calendar and include when to plant your seeds both indoors (if you are starting your own plants) or outdoors.

Get ready, get set:

If you’ll be planting seeds, get them now! Many popular and new varieties sell out quickly and your seeds will be fine for the few weeks or months before you’ll plant them.

With transplants, though, be careful not to buy them too soon! Use your calendar to decide when to buy, not when you see plants for sale. You may end up with spindly, sickly, or overgrown plants if you buy them too early.

GROW!

Get an adult to help you figure out how to prepare your garden plot and/or containers. You may need to have your soil tested or buy potting soil. Make sure you follow directions on how close to plant seeds or plants and any other information about watering and fertilizing to be sure your crops will grow!

Look what we grew!

Article by Debbie Green, Extension Master GardenerSM Volunteer

For more on the Black Mountain Sowing Circle programs (FOR ADULTS):

Feb. 1, 10 to 11:30 AM, Free Gardening Workshops on Starting Seeds Indoors and How to Sharpen Pruning Tools. Black Mountain Library, Education Room

The seed library will provide free materials to get you started: seed starter soil, containers, and seeds to take home (limited quantities).  Bring your small pruning tools for sharpening. Presentations are in partnership with Black Mountain Blooms Seed Lending Library and Buncombe County Extension Master Gardener Volunteers.

Vegetable gardening planting times: https://extensiongardener.ces.ncsu.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/NC-Vegetable-Planting-Guide-1.pdf?fwd=no

**Note: Planting times for Western North Carolina Mountains are in purple and times to harvest from seed are indicated in the left-hand column. Those with an “*” should be started indoors rather direct seeded in the garden.**

For more on kids measuring in the garden:

http://www.njagsociety.org/uploads/1/7/0/5/17057112/you_are_the_ruler_lesson_plan_wbs.pdf

 

 

Kids Post: What is chewing the trees?

In fall we watch for tree leaves to turn pretty colors—but before they turn you may see that a lot of those leaves are being chewed up! What eats tree leaves?

Leaf chewers

Although many people call leaf chewers “worms,” most aren’t worms at all! They are the early stages—called larvae—of a variety of insects.

Caterpillars are larvae that grow up to be butterflies or moths. Although many caterpillars eat plants such as milkweeds or members of the carrot family—including parsley and dill—some prefer trees!

  • Inchworms (fall cankerworms) are fun to watch because they move by inching along, but they can do lots of leaf damage to many of our most popular trees, including maples, oaks, beeches, and hickories. The adults are gray moths; the males have wings, but the females are wingless!
  • Inchworm

    Fall cankerworm wingless female moth
  • Catalpa worms can eat most all the leaves off catalpa trees during the summer—they become sphinx moths!
  • Catalpa worm

    Catalpa worm damage
  • Orangestriped oakworms strip leaves from many types of oak trees as fall approaches—they become orange moths with a white spot on each wing.

  • Orange striped oakworm
  • Fall webworms are another moth caterpillar whose larvae eat the leaves of many trees— birches, cherries, crabapples, hickories, sourwoods, and walnuts—they live inside a web until they are ready to form a cocoon to become a fluffy white moth next spring.

  • Fall Webworm (Hyphantria cunea)_James Emery_CC BY 2.0_Flickr
    Fall webworms

Sawfly larvae grow up to be sawflies—they are small flying insects that lives such short lives that you may never see the adults—or mistake them for wasps if you do! The good news is they cannot sting. Their larvae can do a lot of damage to trees and shrubs, though. Dogwood sawfly larvae may “skeletonize” the leaves of many types of dogwoods, leaving just the leaf veins!

Dogwood sawfly larvae
Dogwood sawfly larvae damage

What can you do about leaf chewers?

Birds and predatory insects feed on these critters, helping manage the damage! Also, most of these leaf chewers do their eating late enough in the year that the trees will soon drop their leaves anyway, so most don’t suffer any serious harm.

  • Catalpa worms eat a bit earlier in the summer, though, and if you love to fish, you can help save tree leaves by collecting these chewers to use as bait!
  • You can stop fall webworm damage by disturbing the web—get an adult to help you cut off any of the webbed areas, use a stick to tear up the web, or use a strong stream of water from a garden hose to bust up the web!
  • Some years fall cankerworms can eat almost all the tree leaves, producing a lot of droppings— their swinging down on spiderweb-like strands bothers some people, too! You can ask an adult to help you trap the new female moths as they crawl up the trees later this fall, once the leaves have dropped and we’ve had a freeze. The City of Charlotte has instructions for how to make sticky band traps: https://charlottenc.gov/Engineering/LandscapeManagement/Trees/Documents/CankerwormBrochure2017.pdf#search=fall%20cankerworm

Article by Debbie Green, Extension Master GardenerSM Volunteer

 For More Information:

Inchworms (fall cankerworm):

https://content.ces.ncsu.edu/fall-cankerworm

Catalpa worms:

http://capitalnaturalist.blogspot.com/2015/07/catalpa-sphinx-moth-caterpillars.html

Orangestriped oakworms:

https://content.ces.ncsu.edu/orangestriped-oakworm

Fall webworms:

https://www.buncombemastergardener.org/tag/fall-webworms/

Dogwood sawfly:

https://hortnews.extension.iastate.edu/2009/8-12/sawfly.html

 

 

Kids Post: Lessons from a Garden

Why try to explain miracles to your kids when you can just have them plant a garden? Robert Brault

Earthbox-Phoenix-CC By-NC-ND 2.0

There are so many lessons to learn in a garden! Some easier than others, but all mirror the struggles and thrills we experience in life. I remember the first flowers I grew were from seed— marigolds—and they were magnificent. I was so proud of that one little planter on my deck!

A few years later, I had a house with a yard and a toddler. I tried planting with my helper, but he showed no interest until a kindergarten experiment growing a sunflower from seed. We started that flower as a seed in a plastic cup with a pencil as a stake so it grew straight. He learned the delight of “I did that!” When it flowered, we picked some seeds for ourselves and left some for the birds—he loved sharing with the birds. That summer we also grew carrots—all he wanted was to pull them up to see how big they had gotten! We ate tiny twisted carrots and he appreciated how they ended up on his plate. I had his attention and he got to see some magic.

Garden lessons

  • Enjoy work. Kids don’t need prompting to find the joy in using a hose or digging in dirt but helping to carry a watering can is hard work, so is filling up containers with dirt. Show them weeds and the satisfaction of yanking them out of the ground!
  • Experience success. Along the path from seed to table are little milestones, such as the cotyledon (the first seed leaves) peeking through the dirt and unfurling its leaves, the seedling growing strong, and producing fruit that we can eat right off the vine. They did it! That hard work led to success—there’s a benefit to work.
  • Experience failure. Sometimes that path gets rocky. As in life, we all experience failures in the garden. Is there a better way to learn resiliency? There’s a lesson in seeing a fat hornworm munching on “my tomato.”
  • Appreciate fresh food. Nothing tastes as good as home-grown veggies!

If you give the children in your life a garden to grow, they will benefit in so many ways. Commend them when they share a bounty of fresh greens. Share in their disappointments when things don’t go well. Teach them about life while they learn to be gardeners. Later on, when they’re teenagers helping you in the garden will be a real miracle!

Article by Michelle Assoian, Buncombe County Extension Master GardenerSM Volunteer.

 To learn more:

Gardening with children:

https://caldwell.ces.ncsu.edu/2017/03/gardening-with-your-children/

Developing a vegetable garden for children:

https://naturalearning.org/childrens-vegetable-gardens-introduction/

Mini gardens for children:

https://www.buncombemastergardener.org/kids-post-mini-gardens-kids

Contact Us

Buncombe County Extension Office
49 Mount Carmel Road
Asheville, NC 28806
Helpline 828-255-5522

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