I really like squash plants. Both the yellow and zuchinnie. They grow BIG and have really pretty flowers.

Your son may also enjoy planting some marigolds around your tomatoes. Marigolds and basil are both beneficial to tomatoe plants.

I am so glad that you are taking your litle one out gardening with you! My kids love it!
It is a great wholesome activity that can be enjoyed together for years to come.

Oh yeah and a great big WELCOME to the oklahoma gardening forums!

Carla

Hi Wills Mommy,

A few weeks ago we had a similar discussion going on plants to grow with kids. I've linked it below. Just click on the link and it will take you to that thread.

Some easy flowers to grow with kids include zinnia, cosmos, and sunflowers.

Some easy veggies are radishes, carrots (if you can get them to sprout), green beans, squash, and pumpkins.

There's lots of other ideas in the attached link.

I hope you'd let us know how it goes for you and Will.

Happy Growing!

Dawn

Here is a link that might be useful: Fun Stuff To Grow

Welcome Will's Mom hope you two have a wonderfull garden

I heard about this Tomato Man. I stopped by the Village Library Community Garden the other day, late. I always seem to catch the tail end of those gatherings. Hmm.

I'm new here, sort of. When I logged on I found I already had an ID so I might as well ask a couple of questions.

I have a lasagna garden I just put together, about 4' X 18'. I have a friendly neighborhood rabbit and I don't want him getting all the greens so I figured I'd build a little fenced area for the greens, spinach and giant mustard for starters. Is something 2 feet high going to be tall enough? Would 18 inches do the trick? I have a tendency to overbuild.

Do I need to protect onion greens too?

I have lots and lots of snails, slugs, rolly pollys and other beetles and things. I haven't seen them in the garden dirt yet but I haven't planted anything yet either but they show up in droves under every piece of wet cardboard and wood around the place. I had some of the mustard plants sitting on the ground and their leaves were getting chewed on by something but by what I know not. Any thoughts? Was it Mr. Rabbit? Or the snails, slugs, etc? I've moved the mustards and all my other seedlings off the ground onto a table in the backyard and haven't seen any new leaf damage. When the mustards were on the ground, so were my tomato plants but they weren't touched. I figure to plant over the next several days when I get my tomato and cucumber stakes, tipis and trellises built.

Anyone heard of and maybe know where I might get a climbing nasturtium or two?

Also, are there any veggies or edible plants that would do well under the cover of a huge Atlas Cedar tree? The dirt under it is black and smells so good there just has to be something good to grow under that tree besides weeds.

Any of you know trees real well? This Atlas Cedar in my yard is huge. People who recognize it from the street when they drive by, stop and knock on my door asking if they can go in the yard to get a better look and maybe some take pictures. It's a very nice tree especially in the winter when it snows. I just never thought it was that special or unusual. then again I don't know trees.

That's enough jabberin for now.

Hank
in near NW OKC

Will's Mom - My son will be three in June... boy how fast time goes by!! We have fun with bulbs and seeds. We go through gardening books that show plant anatomy and he's learned about seeds, and sprouts, and soil and water.., and even weeds. His favorite part is the watering. Once he starts it's hard to get the hose away from him.

Last week he focused the hose on one spot long enough he made a miniature lake, then dunked all of his cars in it. Gardening is definately fun with an alomst three year old!!

Treasure this time you have with him. I have teenage daughters also, and I can barely get them to move off of the couch (DH calls them couch-weights). It's absolutely amazing how quickly the time goes by!

Courtney

Will's mommy. I echo the sentiments of all the others....great thing to do with your child. And if you are lucky perhaps he will always take an interest in it.
One of my favorite pictures of my son when he was around 3 or 4 was of him with hands and lap filled with tomatoes he had helped me plant and care for. He was so proud of them.
He doesn't care a fig about growing anything anymore...hahaha. But he does a wonderful job of tending my gardens while DH and I are off running around. He even got mine through last summer's heat and drought so that is saying a lot.
Welcome and you will enjoy this forum a lot.
G.M.

Hank,

It is good to see you on the forum. Just a suggestion: the next time you have a question that does not relate to the topic in the 'Subject of Posting' box, it would be better to initate your own post with your own subject in the subject box. That will enable people interested in your topic to see it on its own.

To keep rabbits out you will need fencing that is at least 2 feet tall, and it needs to be either rabbit wire with the smaller squares down near the bottom or chicken wire with very small openings. Tiny baby rabbits can fit through really small spaces. Hungry rabbits will eat anything and everything, so you should fence in your entire lasagna bed to be safe.

If you have snails, slugs, and roly polys they will eat anything you plant and are a huge menace to your garden.
The ground beetles, though, are beneficial. To get rid of the snails, slugs and roly polys in the safest manner possible, you can use an organic product called Sluggo. It is only labeled for snails and slugs, but many people report anecdotally that Sluggo is also effective on sow bugs and pill bugs. It is a bait product whose active ingredient is iron phosphate. I wouldn't use one of the chemical slug and snail products whose active ingredient is metaldahyde anywhere near a crop I was going to eat.

You might be able to find nasturtiums at a local nursery. I always raise mine from seed.

Not much in the vegetable world will grow under the shade of a large Atlas Cedar. Greens are one of the most shade tolerant edibles but most greens are cool season crops. You might try Swiss Chard. It is easy to raise from seed and can handle our summer heat. Of the varieties commonly found on the seed racks, 'Bright Lights' Swiss Chard is the most colorful and would really light up the area under that tree, if it can grow in the heavy shade and compete with the tree roots for moisture.

Atlas Cedars are huge monsters. They are beautiful trees if they are planted far enough away from buildings and other trees and have the room to grow and achieve their natural shape. Often they are planted too close to homes and/or other trees or power lines and grow in an awkward and contorted manner as they mature. If people are stopping to look at yours, then I am assuming it has had the space to mature into a beautiful, graceful tree!

Dawn

Well, of course, I'm the butterfly gardener on the forum, and my granddaughter is now 5 years old. She and mom live with me. She has been helping me butterfly garden for 2 years now, since she was 3.

I wouldn't advise some of the plants because some of them are poisonous. However, he would probably love to see parsley worms on parsley or fennel, and they are both easy to grow. The caterpillars metamorph into the beautiful black swallowtail butterflies. We hand-raised them. If you want to know more, let me know. But, my granddaughter can tell everybody the entire life process of a butterfly now!

She likes salad, so we grew mesclun mix for her. We also raised the tomato hornworms that we found on the tomato plants - they are beautiful hummingbird moths. Tomato foliage is poisonous, so be careful. I taught my granddaughter that we always wash our hands after feeding the caterpillars, or you can just simply watch them grow on the plants.

Grow some snapdragons (it may be a bit late to find them now), and show him how the "snap". The snapdragons are also a host plant for the beautiful Buckeye butterflies.

I grew a contorted mulberry in the backyard, and now it is perfect for her to climb in. She calls it her tree.

We also are growing pawpaw trees. Of course, she thinks they are named after her grandpa, whom she calls pawpaw.

She loves to dig in the yard, and I have to be careful of the "pitfalls" now of gardening with a young one. But, she loves flowers and weeds, dirt and mud, watering anything but the plants, and roly-polys. She has a bug container now that she puts some of the bugs she finds in there. She loves ladybugs, too. I teach her to appreciate the insects in nature and we watch them grow. She would rather be outside that indoors any day. And she will dig up weeds and transplant them all over the yard. Actually, some of them have taken root, and it pleases her to no end.

I buy some plants for her to pot up. The other day she potted up catnip for our cats. She loved that because right after she potted it up, George (our cat) came over and started chewing on a leaf!

Herbs are fun, too, because kids are tactile and have a very good sense of smell. We grow lavendar, fennel, parsley, hyssop, mint, lemon balm, and lots of "smell good" plants.

Nasturtiums are edible plants that you can put the flowers in a salad. He might really like that. If he wants to plant a few, they are harmless for him.

I hope you have a great time on your project with your son, and welcome to the forum!

Susan

Thank you so much for the welcome and responses! I took notes to take to the store (LOL). Now we are off to the backyard! I could not ask for a better Mother's Day, gardening with my little man! Enjoy the sunshine!

Hi Will's Mommy!

I hope that you and Will have a wonderful afternoon in the back yard. What a wonderful way to spend Mother's Day together!

It is sunny and lovely here today too.

Dawn