Welcome to Sowing the Seeds of Sustainability with Kids for 2014

This month, given there is still a little time before school resumes, I thought we might look at some sustainable activities to do with the kids outside.

One of the easiest ways to be more sustainable and to reduce your carbon foot print is to grow some of your own food or buy food from local producers.

It is easy to explain to the kids how this is better for the environment. It is likely you have been away on holidays recently either by car or by plane, talk to your children about how far it was from home to where you went, how much petrol it took to do that trip. So now get them to imagine our fruit and vegetable travelling that far, or further, in order for us to buy them at the supermarket or green grocer.

“Wouldn’t it use a lot less petrol and take a lot less time if we only had to step out into the back yard and pick something to eat or walk to the local farmers market to pick up locally grown food?”

 

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So some activities to instil this thinking into their little minds:

  1. Visit a farmers market. Take a look at this website http://www.farmersmarkets.org.au/ to find out if there are any farmers markets near you. If there are, take the kids to them and get them to talk to the farmers about how they grow or produce their products.

Buy them something they can either eat straight away or take home and prepare into a meal the same day.

    2.       Sow some seeds into a pot.

If not sure how to go about this check out my website and check out the tools you need module.

Make sure the kids choose which seeds they want to plant and start with plants that are quick to germinate and quick to harvest. The best for this are things like radish and rocket. But also encourage something like beans or corm that are slower to harvest but are worth the results.

    3. Plant some quick growing seedlings.

Both Mesclun lettuce or silver beet are really quick growing vegetables. Again allow the children to choose what they want to plant and harvest and use the produce as soon as possible.

Not sure how to start off your seedlings? Check out the Starting out your Seedlings module

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4. Plant some herbs in pot. Again something that will grow quickly and be interesting to use.

Some examples are:

Basil  —–>   make into pesto and serve on pasta

Parsley   —–>  make into tabbouleh

Mint  —–>   make into mint and melon salad

Next month I will be doing a post on growing organic strawberries with your kids, great fun and much, much healthier then the shop bought varieties- stay tuned.

Happy Gardening!

Kathy