A Raised Garden Bed & Homeschool Lesson ALL IN ONE

“Tell me and I forget, teach me and I may remember, involve me and I learn”
-Debatable

Michael and Amelia built me a beautiful raised garden bed this weekend. This was Amelia's school work on Friday. From going to the store and buying all of the supplies to measuring, cutting, building, adding the supports and the chicken wire on the bottom. She did so good! This is one of the most moving things that my husband does. He takes the kids with him while he works and shows them things along the way. As they get older sometimes it takes a little more effort to get them out there, but it always pays off. I love that I see Amelia do the same with her siblings, like tonight when she brought Eliana into the kitchen with her and they made cookies together. Although it is more work, it is so good to involve them. If you want your kids (and teens) to learn to do something and to gain confidence, involve them.

Now back to the raised garden bed...

Michael used untreated wood and put garden fabric and then chicken wire all along the bottom and then added wood support beams. Then after we added some compost, he stopped and added even more supports. We may have had a bit of a mess for a minute. Then after the layer of compost we added some rich organic soil (We used Miracle Grow organic) and we were ready to plant! I am so excited about this because although I enjoy growing things, our spring and summers being youth pastors called for a lot of traveling and we just couldn't keep things alive while we were gone. Now that we're home and all of our travel plans are cancelled, here's one thing we can do. AND, I love seeing something grow right now. It shows me that life is changing, the world is still spinning, and we will not be in this season forever.

Ezra and Eliana were all ready to help me transplant our seedlings and plant more seeds into our new garden bed! We planted all of the starter flowers we got from the nursery as well as our carrot, basil, and black bean seedlings that had sprouted. We planted cucumbers, tomatoes, more carrots and an array of different flowers! Zinnias, Bachelor Buttons, Forget Me Nots, and Larkspur, just to name a few. On the ground we took a small piece of land, tilled it, added new soil and planted pumpkins and sunflower seeds.

In the middle of all of this Ezra looked at me and said,



"Mom, I just remembered soil is made out of poop. Can I go wash my hands now?"

I about died of laughter!

My hubby is so sweet in that he built me such a high raised garden bed, knowing that I am so tall and my back isn't the best. It is absolutely perfect and so much cheaper (under $100) building it ourselves, than trying to find one like this for hundreds of dollars, plus its the perfect started size for us.