Boston Flowers

Now that spring is finally, honestly, just around the corner- it is time to get your flowers ready for planting. Each year I like to start a lot of my flowers before the spring gets here so that they are ready for planting soon as the first day of spring gets here. It allows me to see the flowers pop up and bloom much quicker this way. If you are familiar with growing flowers, you most likely already take part in this ritual.

If you’re not a big planter and your just becoming familiar with the process, I’ll give you a little tip on how to start your flowers before the spring gets here. You’ll need a couple of things prior to starting this process.

Things you’ll need
Small planters that will n fit a few seeds
A bag of good fertilizer
A few paper towels

The first thing you want to do is wet a paper towel completely. Once the paper towel is wet, you want to fold it in half and then place the seeds inside. Fold the paper towel over the seeds and leave it alone for a few days. Once the paper towels begin to dry out, rewet them and just keep them moist on a regular basis. Once you notice the sprouts coming from the seeds, you want to remove them from the paper towels. Fill your planters with fertilizer, make small holes using a pencil and place the seeds right side up inside the soil. Cover the seeds and allow them to rise up about the soil. Once they get to be 4 inches tall, you can move them to your garden. 

If you have a child who takes an interest in your gardening, it can somewhat be disappointing as to how hard it can actually be to plant flowers with your kid and get them to grow. However, the blossoms not showing up after your child planted them with tender loving care, can be avoided. There are a number of flowers that are easy to grow and make a great choice when gardening with your child.

Cosmos are a great choice for kids because of their ability to germinate quickly. When kids plant flowers, I’m sure you know that there out there almost every day trying to see if their flowers have come to life yet. Well, picking cosmos for your child to plant will provide them with quicker results than many other flowers. They are also more likely to sprout; making the flowers a sure thing after your kid has planted them.

Zinnias are similar to cosmos when it comes to germinating and sprouting. Their lovely designs make another great choice if you’re looking for the perfect flower to plant with your kids. Both of these flowers also attract butterflies, bees and small birds. Attracting these to your garden will more it not only a beautiful experience for your child, but an educational one as well.

Bee balm is another fun gardening choice. They all rise up low to the ground and then have beautiful blossoms shooting up from the low flowers in no time. Giving your child their own special area in the garden will allow them to learn responsibly will feeling confident in their efforts. 

For those of us who look forward to growing and eating our vegetables each summer, we know it’s a depressing thought when the winter is around the corner and our fresh vegetables are no more. Did you know that properly storing your home-grown vegetables can increase the lifespan on those vegetables for close to a year? Yes, it’s true, and that means you don’t have to go all winter without your vegetables any longer. The first step to enjoying these fresh delights year round is knowing how to properly store them.

If you’re looking to store garlic and onions, an in home freezer will do the trick. While you may think it’s fine to put all of your vegetables in there for storage, this is not true. While vegetables are considered ‘dead’ upon picking, many of them still require oxygen in order to stay fresh.

For the other vegetables that need to stay in oxygen, you’ll benefit from keeping them in a cool, moist area; such as the basement. Beets, brussel sprouts, cabbage, potatoes, rutabagas, squash and turnips can all last never months and well into last summer if kept in a cool, moist area. When packing the vegetables for storage in the basement, you want to use a small crate, fill it with hay and place the vegetables within the hay. This method will keep the vegetables fresh and keep rodents from eating the vegetables should they access the area. Unfortunately, other types of home-grown vegetables only stay fresh for a couple days to a week and are best if used within the summer months. 

If you have children, I’m sure you know that they are more than interested in your gardening. Well, that is until they hit the teen years and then they are pretty much less than interested in anything that has to do with anything, but their social life. Anyway, while my oldest son was young, he would follow me around the garden and love to get dirty with me.

His favorite thing to do was look for worms in the garden and collect them all inside a large soda bottle. Not to mention, the one day when he decided the worms were hungry and fed them a bunch of ants.. it turned out to be a worm massacre. As my children got older, we developed an activity that I thought I would share with you readers.

Each year I’d let him pick the type of flower he wanted to grow. He would plant it and take care of it, with a little extra love from mom of course while he was still young. He always chose annuals, so we found a way to keep all of his flowers long after they have wilted. Once the flowers grew, he and I would choose the largest, healthiest flower from the bunch. We laid it down on wax paper, placed another piece of wax paper on top and I would use the iron to press the flower and preserve it forever.

Each year we’d do this same routine; it allowed us to bond and let him feel as if he was important to the garden as well. I continued the tradition with both my girls, and now they each have books filled with pressed flowers from over the years.