03.22.07
Gardening is the Answer . . .
This is part of the series:
- Premise For The Abrupt Climate Change Game for Community Planners
- The Best Shade Tree
- Grow Corn for Food or Fuel
- YouTube Video Contest
- One Way to Think About A Community Disaster
- Culprit Tax (Carbon Tax) to Pay For Disaster Preparedness
- Should Communities Support Seed Banks?
- Save the World - Youtube Video Contest
- Victory Gardens as Community Insurance
- Deer and the Abrupt Climate Change Game
- Zone Roof Gardens to Plan For Abrupt Climate Change (the game)
- Who Knew the UK Drank So Much Tea? Maybe Their Streets Are Dark?
- Where’s the Climate Change Game?
- Gardening is the Answer . . .
- Help Juneau . . . Not That They Asked
- Don’t Save the World With Bamboo
- AP gets Silence of the Frogs Wrong?
- Reunion Smalltalk - How Will You Survive Global Warmng
What is the single most effective thing you can do to help your kids learn to respond to a global crisis? Teach them to grow a vegetable garden.
Name that Crisis
- Problems with the economy are causing food bank shortages? Teach your child to grow food to donate to the needy.
- Weather patterns cause a crop to fail? Americans won’t starve but the replacement food they buy will come from somewhere and the original customers might have difficulties. Your own food supply can help.
- Avian Flu? Having fresh vegetables can cut down on trips to the grocery store.
- Storms cause flooding that disrupts food transportation? Again, a source of food in the backyard can be a nice safety cushion.
Gardening can make a significant difference - during WWII victory gardens supplied 40% of the US food requirements during the summer months, freeing up fuel to use in the war effort.
Guiding a toddler to plant carrot seeds – even if they all end up rather closer than you might plant them, can give a child a huge sense of accomplishment as they thin the growing plants and see the progress of the carrots. Older children can make a significant contributionto the family table.
My then three-year-old son never complained about the long hours I would work in front of the computer – he just would come in and invite me to go out and dig with him – not in the sand box – in the garden. He almost always succeeded.
Now is the time to sit with your youngster and plan just how you might maximize the produce from a small plot - broccoli planted soon, lettuce, amongst the tomato plants, and finally, fall squash. (That’s not necessarily an optimum plan – just the things I like and have time for.) Take a soil sample with your child and discuss the science behind pH, then start to adjust if necessary.
If best-comes-to-best and the disaster never occurs? Maybe your child will just acquire a lifetime hobby. This is bad?
Lisa said,
03.27.07 at 7:32 pm
Teaching your child to garden is a fantastic way to teach them about many other things. Great idea.
Here via the carnival of family life.