Best edibles for kids to plant?

Discussion in 'Fruit and Vegetable Gardening' started by emandeli, Jan 21, 2010.

  1. emandeli

    emandeli Member

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    Loofah is a plant??!?? Excuse my ignorance! I had no idea you could grow loofah. I will have to look it up-never seen in seed catalogues that I get. Do you have to start from a plant? I think this is great-even for me to have some growing! I'm excited!

    The link to the BBC Gardening with Kids is fantastic! Thank you! It is geared to the age groups we need and includes activities. I think it would be great for the kids to learn more about composting (we compost basic fruit/veg peels etc) and learn about worms and such as well. The other thing we want to do (which is in the yard) but nothing to do with plants...is build a bathouse for the side of the house to keep down the mosquitos in the summer with the pond right beside the house. I can't wait for our drier warmer weather (it is like Seattle-rains quite a bit here!).
     
  2. Katalina25

    Katalina25 New Member

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    loofa, I too am in shockat this being a plant.

    Don't forget the bees if your not scared of them like me...all those honey sarnies to eat...yummmy!

    Glad you liked BBC and its usefullness.
     
  3. togata57

    togata57 Generous Contributor 10 Years

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    emandeli...how beautiful!
     
  4. JanR

    JanR Active Member

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    emandeli you are going to have a wonderful time gardening on your new property. You certainly have lots of room. I would highly recommend that you grow Sugar Snap Peas. They are wonderful and you can eat the whole pod. You kids will love them.
     
  5. togata57

    togata57 Generous Contributor 10 Years

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    Any plans or ideas for the pond?
     
  6. joclyn

    joclyn Rising Contributor

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  7. emandeli

    emandeli Member

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    Thanks for providing the links for the loofah!

    ...."Akebia quinata chocolate vine" sounds interesting and I am wondering if there is a thread of plants that taste like "something else." I once tasted a fern root (shown, and provided to eat) that tasted like licorice. It would be a neat discussion....

    The other question I had was...someone noted above about honey bees...and eating honey sarnies...what are sarnies?? :)
     
  8. Katalina25

    Katalina25 New Member

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    Soz emandeli!

    Sarnies are sandwiches like honey and toast, Bacon and egg etc.
     
  9. Pasquale

    Pasquale Active Member

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    Definitive Pumpkin! Read the following email from my daughter.

    In October, after carving the Halloween pumpkin, I kept the seeds. Some had started to sprout. So, I gave some to Adam and told him to go and plant them in the garden and see if he could grow one. Well, last month, he was outside playing and he came running into the house screaming with euphoria. You would have thought he had unburied a treasure chest full of gold. He made me close my eyes and come outside where he led me to, and revealed, the growing pumpkin plant! He was so excited. "It grew, Mama, it grew." My question is, what do we do now? It has orange flowers growing on it. When and where will the pumpkin grow from? What do the flowers turn into? These are Adam's questions to Nonno. Mamma doesn't have the answers. Sad, but true.
     
  10. togata57

    togata57 Generous Contributor 10 Years

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    Watermelon.
     
  11. JanR

    JanR Active Member

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    Pumpkins have male flowers and female flowers. The pumpkin will grow from the base of the female flower, but only if it gets fertilized. The female flower will have a bulge at the base of the flower. You can help nature along a bit, but only if you have a male flower and a female flower open at the same time. With a paint brush you can pick up some pollen form the male flower and transfer it to the inside of the female flower.

    Keep in mind that the plant might not grow a pumpkin as it could have been crossed by something else. The flower could have been fertilized by any plant in the squash family.
     
  12. tgplp

    tgplp Active Member

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    Cool, you can make pumpkin plants grow something else?! Is this good or bad?
    Have fun, Emandeli!
    ~Tgplp :)
     
  13. JanR

    JanR Active Member

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    Probably mostly bad, but you never know, you might end up with an even better pumpkin or squash.
     
  14. emandeli

    emandeli Member

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    I once had a zuchini and a acorn (?) squash cross pollinate or something somehow because it was a zuke plant, produced this half zuchini half acorn squash. the weird thing was that you could tell it was two distinct veggies there...I was really surprised!
     

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