The Birds and the... Pumpkins - Teaching my 9 year old about pollination.
I cannot think of any better way than to spend my lunch break than out in my garden with my Mini-Me. Teaching her the science behind how the plants produce fruit. We recently watched a video on pollinating or pumpkins manually and now my daughter is all up in the flowering end of the pumpkin's business. I have showed her the difference between the male and female plants. She really wants to see me poke the male end of the flower into the female end of the flower. I keep telling her we should let the bees do their job and we should only interject if its needed. that seemed to satisfy her and we moved onto the next topic of discussion - her wanting to be a youtuber. Great thing about my Mini-Me is she has a very short attention span.
The corn pictured below is a short day variety of corn at only 55 days to maturation. I can't complain though, this corn has been in the ground less than a month and is gaining on my 9 year old. I don't anticipate a high yield this year as we only have about two rows and four hills with corn planted. I think my husband snuck some into the bean teepee too though. At any rate, if we can get at least one meal and maybe enough to freeze for a few more meals would be kind of cool.
In other news: The puppies outdid themselves today and took advantage of the quiet afternoon we all had after our lunch break. Puppy antics is very tiring apparently and requires copious naps afterwards.
I am so blessed to have the ability to work from home so I can enjoy these moments with my family as we learn and grow together on our homestead journey living #THL - Thank you all for sharing in our journey - Happy Homesteading friends :)
I just had to comment on your husband sneaking corn into the bean teepee, as I'm sure I would have done the same. You don't plant the three sisters together? Actually, you kinda do, as I can see some type of squash next to your corn.
Nice post, by the way! It made me smile. Very cute: your daughter, the dogs, the corn, and you telling the story. :-)
Hi @stortebeker! We sort of plant the three sisters... in the 4 hills we have we did not plant the beans. We planted the pumpkins, squash and corn. In our rows of corn we planted beans down the center of the row. Next year we plan to put in more hills as they have shown to be very productive so far. So next year, the hills will be plenty big enough for the three sisters. :). I am just excited to see the bean teepee coming long so well. I will have to post an update on that soon.
Yes, please post some pics! Looking forward to them.
Love this post. Teaching kids where real good comes from is so important. Makes me sad that there are kids out there who think food just comes from the supermarket. Keep up the great posts :-)
Agreed @dannybarnes! So many kids and even some young adults are totally clueless about where their food actually comes from. Apparently the magic food fairy produces it in the back of the WalMart and/or supermarket. I don't know. I grew up on a dairy farm as a kid - so gardening and raising my own food is second nature to me. I have always tried to have some type of patio garden or container garden no matter where they Army has sent us these past 10 years so I can continue to grow food for my family - even if on a small scale. I also love taking my kids back to the family farm in Vermont to see where their milk comes from and just recently they watched a steer being butchers. I thought for sure they would go vegetarian after that.... but did no phase the in the least as we talked through the process. I think me watching them going through that learning process was amazing honestly.