Growing Children with "Green" Thumbs

After two years of failed attempts at growing greens, we have successfully reaped our first harvest of lettuce and spinach!  So exciting to see all that watering and weeding paying off!  My kids helped through out the whole process, from planting the seeds, weeding the garden, watering and picking the full grown leaves.  I took the greens inside to wash and store, and I could have done it much faster by myself, but God showed me this could be a great teaching opportunity.  So, although it took longer, and was way messier than it would have been by myself, my son and daughter learned how to work together, patience, following directions, washing, drying and storing home grown salad greens.  They LOVED helping, and it brought such joy to my heart seeing their little faces laugh and play and learn together.  I hope to look back and remember this experience, and see that just a few extra minutes and a little extra clean up time led to great memories and in the end my little helpers learned a new skill!!

Also....if you have children that aren't too keen on eating vegetables, try to grow some, they will be way more likely to try it, if they help with the whole process.  My two kids both ate lettuce and fresh spinach right off the plant, I couldn't believe it, so I had to take a picture!

We cleaned our fresh picked greens by placing in a bowl and filling with water. Stir leaves around, let the dirt settle at the bottom.  Scoop leaves out and place into a colander, drain and rinse the bowl, and repeat until there is no dirt in the bottom of the bowl.  It took us 3 times.

Drew and Emma enjoyed swishing the leaves around in the water.

We dried our leaves on napkins, and after soaking up the water we placed leaves in a gallon zip-lock bag.  I might have to look into getting a salad spinner :)  

Fun times!!