34: Growing Together: How Gardening with Kids Can Cultivate Connection and Self-Sufficiency
In this episode, homeschooling mother of three, Alicia DeVore, shares her passion for gardening with kids and how it can offer numerous benefits, including connecting with nature, developing higher-level thinking skills, and leading to a more self-sufficient lifestyle.
Alicia offers practical tips for gardening even if you don't have a large backyard and covers that gardening can be a space for families to connect and dream together while also teaching children about science and self-sufficiency.
Summary
Gardening with kids can offer a multitude of benefits beyond just growing your own food. It can be a way to connect with nature, develop higher-level thinking skills, and ultimately lead to a more self-sufficient lifestyle.
Alicia DeVore, a homeschooling mother of three, has been gardening with her children for the past decade. She initially struggled with getting her garden to grow, but eventually found success with the help of soil and fall planting.
Alicia has since made gardening a central part of her homeschooling curriculum, using it as a way to connect with her children and teach them about science and self-sufficiency. She believes that gardening can be a safe space for families to connect and dream together, and that it's a valuable experience for kids to see where their food comes from and to taste the real flavors of fresh produce.
Even if you don't have a large backyard, Alicia suggests that you can still garden with your kids using containers or raised beds. In fact, two raised garden beds measuring just three by six feet can provide a family with up to 30% of their greens and vegetables for six to nine months of the year. And with a vertical planter, you can even grow herbs and lettuce all year round.
If you're not sure where to start, Alicia offers a freebie on her website, createmygarden.net, which includes three themed gardens for kids to plant: a butterfly garden, a teepee green bean garden, and a salsa garden. She also shares gardening tips and challenges on her Instagram page, @createmygarden.
So why not grab your kids and head to the farmer's market to compare the difference between store-bought and locally grown produce? It could be the start of a new hobby that offers benefits beyond just a tasty salad.
Mentioned In This Episode
Where you can find Alicia: Website
Alicia's Free Gift: 3 Themed Gardens to do with Kids
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Transcript:
[0:00:02] Destini Copp: And my special guest today is Alicia Devore. Alicia is owner of Create My Garden, and she has been teaching for many years in the school system and then homeschooling her kids for the past 16 years, where gardening has become a central part of their life. So learning how to grow their own food with their kids has become passion and has allowed her family to make connections around the garden. Alicia, I am super excited to chat with you today, and we're going to be talking about how gardening has changed up your family life forever. So before I get started, in all the good questions that I have for you, can you tell the audience a little bit more about you and how you got started?
[0:00:51] Alicia DeVore: Well, I have been in the homeschooling arena for the last 16 years, and ten years ago, my son was my oldest son was ten years old, and he came to me and said, mom, I really want to dig and I want to grow garden. And in the past, my experience with gardening or growing was I had a very brown thumb. I could not grow anything, but I knew that I could help grow my kids. So we went ahead and built a couple of beds. My husband helped build a couple of beds in our tiny little backyard in Los Angeles, and we started a garden. And that summer, everything in the garden turned yellow and died. And I thought, I can never do this. So we called the soil company and they added some different nutrients, and I threw in seeds for the fall, and everything in the garden grew. And at that moment, I knew I was completely hooked, and my kids were, too, as we watched the miracle of seeds growing and eating what we were growing.
[0:01:56] Destini Copp: So the one thing I just want to kind of touch upon, you mentioned that you started in La. Can you tell the audience what size of property you had to grow on? I'm assuming in a big city like that, it probably wasn't a big area. A big farm, like acres and acres.
[0:02:15] Alicia DeVore: Right, right, exactly. Destini Copp space was so tiny, we could barely fit a mini trampoline and three tiny garden beds. We even tried having chickens, which lasted for about four years, which was very fun, but we had no space. We had a play place that took up the other little tiny space. We were very smart, and we were still able to grow so much food that we were able to eat from season to season after I learned how to grow.
[0:02:46] Destini Copp: So it sounds like you really started gardening to spend time with your kids and to maybe teach them some things about how to be self sufficient. Can you go in a little bit more detail about that?
[0:03:01] Alicia DeVore: Absolutely. As I started to learn more about gardening, and I would bring my kids out with me, and we would start transplanting seedlings or we would start doing seeds or even bringing kale inside to make a smoothie for the morning. It started to energize my kids and being able to see things like grow in life. And we started connecting more and more in the garden, so much so that every day for our homeschooling day, part of our homeschooling time would be going out to the garden and seeing and observing, which is so scientific and such a fun thing to do. We'd get vitamin D, we'd end up playing and being silly. It was a time of connection where we all had our effective filters down and we were able to really see each other. The garden was a safe space for us, and then it became a safe space for me by myself in the morning. I would go out every morning before the kids woke up with my coffee and I would just sit watching no matter what was going on in the garden, no matter what season, I was just breathing in and enjoying. And soon the garden became so valuable to me as a mom that now it was re energizing me to be a better mom during the day and energizing my kids during the day to have fun with me.
[0:04:20] Destini Copp: So I love what you said. I would just go out and just breathe it in. That just reminds me of a cold morning where you go outside and the crisp air is out there and you're just breathing in all that fresh air and all that goodness and everything that's coming from your garden. So I love what you said there. So tell us a little bit more about benefits in gardening with your kids. I know that you're doing it with part of the homeschooling curriculum, but some of us might not be homeschooling. So tell us a little bit about that, about how that benefits maybe families who aren't homeschooling.
[0:05:01] Alicia DeVore: That's an excellent question. I think being able to put something even in a container, a pot, and start your mini garden with your child, watching the miracle of things actually grow, giving them power and understanding the timing of the seasons and knowing that they in the future can grow their own food. There's so many benefits of connection, time of life, skills that are happening, using the food that you grow and then learning how to make a new recipe together. None of that has to be done in homeschooling during the day. It can be done on the weekend. I've got grandmas that are emailing me and purchasing things from me that are helping them to do things with their grandkids and making connections with them when they come to visit over on the weekend. So gardening can be a part of a lifestyle that allows your family to breathe together no matter what time of day it's happening and through the season. And it's also such a great illustration in the garden when you teach your kids that the garden is sleeping right now during the very harsh winter months, but we're still planning, we're still preparing and we're still getting ready for the next season and we're dreaming. It shows them that they get to dream for their own lives and they get to plan for their own lives. The skills that they learn by putting a garden together, whether it's in a container or a raised bed or in the ground, whatever space you have is such a valuable space and time for them to connect and to learn.
[0:06:37] Destini Copp: So what I kind of learned from what you said there, you don't need big spaces. You can just start with a container. Start teaching kids how to grow their own food, what lessons, and I know you're using this as part of your home schooling curriculum, but what lessons can we teach our kids about? And I'm trying to figure out the words here, but basically growing our own food, not having to depend on others, what do you teach your kids related to that?
[0:07:12] Alicia DeVore: Absolutely self sufficiency is a huge piece. Being able to allow our kids to see that we can have a salad for six to nine months a year and go out and come again and cut a few leaves off of six different salad like lettuces, and then come in and have nutritious things that are helping us to grow is very valuable. Being able to use our garden to show the real taste of food, not just from the grocery store. One of the first activities I love to do with kids is to say, okay, let's go ahead and grab something from a farmer's market and let's grab the same item from a grocery store and let's do a comparison. Is this gardening thing worth it? Why do we want to do this? Why do we want to invest in something like this? And every single time kids come back to me saying the difference, there was such a huge difference all in one is the stuff from the farmers market. And I'm like, well, that's the kind of food you're going to be growing in your own garden. The taste, the texture, the yumminess of food comes alive when it's coming out of a garden. When you're picking a little cherry tomato and you're popping it in your mouth in the midst of summer, there is nothing like taste that freshness that you get. And that's what we want to bring our kids to is let's bring more health, let's bring more life, let's bring the sun, let's bring observation, let's bring life skills, let's bring it into the kitchen. And I just know so many kids love to be with their parents in the kitchen, specifically under the age of twelve and they love to try a new recipe or love to cook, or let's pretend to have a cooking show from the garden. There's just so many fun interactions that you can do as a parent, helping your kids learn that these life skills can be something they can take with them wherever they go.
[0:09:14] Destini Copp: And I love the comparison that you talked about, about going to get like, a tomato from a farmer's market versus a tomato from the grocery store and looking at them and tasting them and seeing what the difference is. I think that's so valuable. And I agree with you. Taking that cherry tomato off a garden from your own backyard, it almost tastes like candy.
[0:09:39] Alicia DeVore: Does it completely taste like candy? And there's just nothing like it. I have many clients that come to me saying, can you just keep me to grow a tomato plant, please? Because that taste is something I can't get anywhere else.
[0:09:54] Destini Copp: So let me ask you this. You've been doing this for a while. You moved from La. Up to Northern California. How has gardening evolved for you today?
[0:10:06] Alicia DeVore: It was a completely different experience, gardening from Southern California to Northern California. And I had to re point what it meant to be in season and what type of season each month was going to be in my garden. From that experience, I was like, let's simplify this so that anybody all across the nation and even the world can use temperatures to help them understand what season they're in and what plants to grow in each of those seasons.
[0:10:41] Destini Copp: Okay? And I don't know a lot about this. So what you may grow in, let's just say March in Southern California, is that different from what you would grow in March in Northern California?
[0:10:55] Alicia DeVore: Yes. And a lot of things people ask me all the time, what zone are you in, what gardening zone? Gardening zones don't matter because my gardening zone is a nine, and it matches what's going on in Florida. In Florida. They're planting tomatoes. Right now. If I were to plant tomatoes where I live, every single leaf, every single thing would completely die. I can't plant my tomatoes until after Mother's Day. So understanding the temperature, the highs, and the lows that affect each of those plants is crucial. So learning how to let your garden grow in its own personality, depending on what's happening in the weather, is such a great key. It's almost a gift, and it gives you the ability to be able to grow more because of it.
[0:11:51] Destini Copp: And I'm assuming that weather can fluctuate, right? I'm in Georgia. Atlanta, Georgia. And this past weekend it was freezing. I mean, it got down to below 32, and that probably would have killed anything that I had growing in my garden. So let me ask you this. What do you see a garden doing for a family nowadays? A garden.
[0:12:15] Alicia DeVore: And it can provide at least if you have two beds, let's just say you have two beds of three x six raised bed. You can get yourself salad for three to six months, from six to nine months of the year, you can provide probably about 20% to 30% of your greens and some of your veggies, other veggies that you might want throughout the year with two garden beds. Can you imagine?
[0:12:46] Destini Copp: So two, three x six garden beds. That's all you need to do. All of that six to nine months and 20% to 30% of your grains and veggies?
[0:12:58] Alicia DeVore: Yes, definitely.
[0:13:00] Destini Copp: So I would say almost anybody, if you have any sort of land, you would have room for that.
[0:13:08] Alicia DeVore: Exactly. You can use a vertical planter. A vertical planter can have 40 blocks inside of it. I have five vertical planters, so I'm a little addicted, but I have herbs growing all year. I've got lettuce growing. I move my vertical planter in the shade in the summer. I'm using the temperature to know that I'm going to be planting red lettuce in the summer, because red does better with hotter weather and will not bolt as quickly. So I've got some different tips and tricks that I can use my vertical planter to keep growing my lettuce all summer, even when most lettuces stop growing.
[0:13:48] Destini Copp: Now, Alicia, do you have any last minute tips for the audience before we wrap it up here?
[0:13:56] Alicia DeVore: Get your kids outside and in the dirt. Going outside and having that sunshine with the family is so important. Give them some seeds. Go ahead and make it an observational time that every day they water just a little bit, not too much. They keep things going. They watch what's going on with the birds. They watch what's going on with the bugs. They are attentive to what's happening in the garden. It pulls themselves out of their own TV time, their own video game time, and instead it makes them think and process in a way that's so much higher level and it brings connection. So I really think just getting outside my youngest is Autistic, and he's 13, and he has very limited communication, but we go outside every single day, and we go out to the garden, and I may not be doing anything in the garden. A lot of times I am just breathing. I am just enjoying. I am just looking at it. I am just observing. And he's out there with me talking.
[0:15:00] Alicia DeVore: And as much as he can talk and tell me over and over different things, we're out there connecting. And there's something about being in the air and being outside in the cold or in the hot that gives us that time where he feels close to his mom. And it may be the only time in the whole day that we feel close together, but we feel close near the garden.
[0:15:24] Destini Copp: It is such a great way to connect with your kids and connect with nature at the same time. And Alicia, thank you so much for joining me. Can you tell the audience where they can find you? And I think you have a free gift for them also.
[0:15:41] Alicia DeVore: I do. I have a three themed gardens for kids that you can do that give you exactly what to do to plant. A butterfly garden, a teepee green bean garden, and a fun garden with like a salsa garden. So in this freebie, you can find it on my website@createmygarden.net and you will look for it under the family fun gardening space. You can also find me at createmygarden on Instagram. I am always doing crazy fun things on there. I'm starting a worm composting challenge in a few months, so I'm destini it out so people can see what's happening with that. I just have a lot of fun showing off what's happening in the garden because I want to make gardening easy for you so that you don't have to go out and find all the information that you can just enjoy it with your kids and your family.
[0:16:32] Destini Copp: I love that. So the worm composting sounds like a really fun challenge. So, Alicia, thank you so much for joining me and sharing all of this with us today.
[0:16:45] Alicia DeVore: Thank you for having me. It's been so fun.