Floral Friday: Edible Flowers - Courgette Flowers

Today I am introducing Floral Friday. A regular post every Friday on flowering plants to grow with your kids, and to have in your garden. All the plants featured will be ‘family friendly’. By this I mean they will either:-

 

• Grow easily and be a ‘good doer’.
• May self –seed. 
• Will have a point of interest e.g. interesting smell or edible. 
• Not too much maintenance. 
• Long flowering. 
• Will withstand a couple of hit by a football. 
• Not too invasive.

I will feature not just flowers from herbaceous plants, but also from shrubs, tree and vegetables. I hope the regular feature will help to inspire you and your family to grow more whilst also growing your kids.

 

 

Courgette Seedling

 

 

To start us off today, I have chosen an edible flower from the courgette plant.

 

This is such an easy plant to grow from its lovely large seeds. If you haven’t grown courgette with kids before and you have space in a vegetable plot for them, then they are well worth trying. The deep yellow flowers are one of the most beautiful of all the vegetable flowers. They don't last long as they need to turn into that courgette. Watching them daily is an easy way for a child to see how a flower turns into a vegetable.

  

 

Courgette Flower

 

Deep Fried Courgettes

And, of course, if you don’t want all the numerous courgettes that one plant is likely to produce you can always eat the flower. They are really yummy deep fried in batter.

  

I have more on growing courgettes with children on my kidsinthegarden site.

 

 

 

Growing with Kids 1 - Radishes

Radish harvest

We are adding a few more veg to our repertoire this year.  Lots of kids gardening books suggest that one of the easiest vegetables to grow with kids are radishes and guess what they are right.  Our little bunch above were planted at the end of half term, in early June and have gone from plot to plate in less than five weeks.  That's fast growing.

They are of the globe variety, with a hot and quite fiery taste - a little bit too peppery for my son.  For me they brought back memories of my childhood with my family growing them and cutting crosses in the top to open them up into star shapes.  We also used to have great fun making vegetable faces with them and other vegetables.

They are ideal for taking on picnics.  Although they look good with leaves on we took them off of ours before storing to prevent goodness travelling up to the leaves.

We will definitely be sowing so more this summer though will take the advice from Love radish to sow a purple variety with a milder flavour perhaps more suited to younger children.

We have a sister site kidsinthegarden which has a wealth of information on growing vegetables with children.

Happy First Birthday. Garden Stars of the Year

We have had a great first year on the blog. When I asked my son what he had enjoyed most about our garden, without any hesitation he listed the following:-

• Digging.
• Looking at the vegetables and feeling how heavy they were.
• Eating the vegetables.
• Finding ‘bones’ in the soil.

Gardens are great spaces to reflect in and also reflect about and its good to see that his memories can be so easily recalled. Our little plot this year has been tranquil, productive and beautiful. The veg area was a great success (why oh why didn’t I start it before?).

My garden stars of the year have been:-

1. Very unexpectedly the french beans which were so very tasty to eat and easy to grow. So there will be more grown up the fence this year and over my son’s den.
2. Nasturtiums which are such good flowers for children to grow. Dare I say even better to grow than sunflowers. Ours reseeded from last year. Because of last years cold winter they took a while to get going, but then flowered until November. It was lovely having some extra peppery flavour to our salads.
3. There are no hostas grown in the ground in the garden as they are munched to death. But hostas in pots do survive and my Sum and Substance hosta looked wonderful this year.
4. My son who has really enjoyed all garden activity.  When it was suggested he should draw a flower he didn't just draw the standard sunflower-type flower.  He produced a whole page of Venus Flytraps, including their food.  I think perhaps we have visited Kew Gardens a bit too often.

Looking forward to our 2011 garden.

How Did Your Vegetables Grow



September 2010



April 2010


I posted back in February about the new vegetable plot in the garden and you’ll see from the photo that it is now full of vegetables and vegetation. We have had great success in growing tomatoes, courgettes, strawberries and beans and are currently harvesting daily. The tomatoes have been prolific. We have not been so lucky with the carrots, onions and garlic.


Lessons learnt include

1. Use a type of courgette which has smaller leaves and therefore uses up less space on a small plot.
2. Provide stronger staking for the tomatoes.
3. Plant more beans because they are so yummy and help us avoid using the beans flown in from Kenya. 
4. Plant strawberries in pots and hanging baskets next year to prevent slug damage.
   
   
   
   
   

My son has got his hands dirty in every sense. He has loved watering, picking and eating the veg. If we were away for a couple of days in the summer holidays his (and my) first action was to run down the bottom of the garden to check out the activity in the vegetable plot

I am going to sow some Kale – ‘Nero di Toscana’ and some winter salad in the next couple of days and then start doing a good search of the seed catalogues. Can’t wait for next year.



Frogs in a Grow Bag

We have always had numerous types of frogs in our garden. A green frog watering can, stone frogs and some made of cast iron. Although we do not have a pond there have always been real frogs. One of which came all the way with me to the rubbish tip and back again. Than goodness I realised he was there before the clippings went down the chute. I always now check my garden rubbish bags before setting off.


This year we have had a real delight with the frogs. They have taken up residence in the tomato grow bags. Each time the tomato plants are watered one, and sometimes two frogs, peep their heads out to receive a lovely dousing. I am using organic seaweed fertiliser on the tomato plants so I am hoping that there will be no harm to the frogs. We have also spotted what I think is toad in the garden. The more the better as far as I am concerned especially as I am sure they are helping to reduce the slug population in the garden.

Most information on the internet about attracting frogs and toads to your garden concentrates on having a pond. However most frogs and toads do not hibernate in water and spend a lot of their time on dry land so there is no reason why they cannot be frequent visitors to most gardens. The tree stumps and log piles left in our garden may be a prefect habitat for them. The Nottinghamshire Wildlife Trust gives lots of tips and information about creating a frog-friendly garden.

My New Vegetable Plot

One of my major gardening projects this year has been to create a veg plot at the bottom of my garden. For years there has been a raised platform made from railway sleepers upon which I have placed various large pots and objects. We haven’t been able to use it as a surface in the summer because unfortunately the sleepers where never treated and therefore oozed oil every time the weather warmed up. These have now gone to be placed under a greenhouse and the back of the garden has a slightly raised veg bed, about 6ft by 15 ft.

My 5 year old and I have spent the last couple of weeks digging, double digging, and digging in manure. We also have collected half a dustbin of stones and rubble. Interestingly what he enjoyed most was the physical work, finding bones in the soil and playing with good old London clay. It looks as if part of the area has been used for bonfires in the past so I am hoping that the charcoal will not affect the fertility of the soil.

So now the growing starts and I hope in a couple of months time I can post a proper ‘after‘ photo showing just how productive a small plot can be. That is if I work out how to stop the foxes digging in it.