Gardening Off-Grid With Kids – Getting Started…

32 degrees outside - 11:29 am - cold and windy with high clouds...

We are about halfway through winter and spring is in our sight.  We have picked out the location for our off-grid garden and now have to level the ground, fence it in and build raised garden beds.  Just walking around with a tape measure, we think we can squeeze in a 60 x 60 fenced in garden with attached tool shed that will also house the chicken coop and run.  In order to start planting late winter / early spring fruits and veggies, we need to have all this done by the end of March.  I hope that is a realistic goal.

Our two children, who are 2 and 5, love having their own space, whether it is at their own desk area in the house, or the tent they’ve created with chairs and blankets in the dining room.  The same is true for the garden.  So we will be setting a side a raised garden bed just for them, which will be marked with a stepping-stone that has their names and handprints on it. 

Their garden will be kid-based.  This means that our daughter gets to help plot out the raised garden bed and generate ideas for what will be planted in it.  She has already gone thru the seed catalogs numerous times, writing down what she would like to plant.  Seed catalogs are like a good book that you just can’t put down.  We all love flipping through the shiny pages, filled with glorious colors that dazzle with this year’s must have blooms.  In addition to picking out what will be planted, they will help with the planting and maintenance of their garden.  They also get to pick out their own gardening tools.  Nothing motivates the little gardeners more than having their own shovels, gardening gloves, watering pails and wagons.

The best things we may ever cultivate on our property will be two little gardeners.