Product Description

You'd like to plant a garden but you aren't sure how or where or what.

You have a yen to grow some fresh veggies but you'd like a little handholding through the enterprise.

You've imagined cultivating a modestly sized plot of dirt with your kids but you're afraid you'll all regret it later.

Don't do anything until you've read A Guide to Happy Family Gardening. It is clear. It is precise. It is hard-won wisdom from a mom who's been seven years in the adventure.

You can begin anytime of the year. Spires starts with The Dreaming Season and then steps her readers through The Digging Season, The Planting Season, The Tending Season, The Harvesting Season, and finally The Sleeping Season.

Along with more than 100 tips are family gardening stories; a few straight-from-the-garden recipes; lists of magazines, catalogs, and web sites offering more specific information; and detailed drawings for building a composting bin, a cold frame, and more.

Whether you begin with an amaryllis bulb, a garden-in-a-box, or a terraced plot, here are clear and specific steps for succeeding and keeping everyone in a pleasant mood.

By the author of the popular book, A Guide to Happy Family Camping.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #2528849 in Books
• Published on: 1969-12-31
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 96 pages

From the Back Cover
Five Happy Gardener Principles

1. Observe recommended plant spacing as a minimum! In a crowded garden, neither you nor the plants will be happy.

2. Don't waste anything! This applies to everything from compost-able vegetative matter to the sod you bust up making room for the garden.

3. Everything can be fun. Make it so!

4. You're going to get dirty. Make it part of the fun and keep the hose handy!

5. Let the garden tell you what to make for dinner.

About the Author
Tammerie Spires has been messing around in the kitchen since childhood and enjoys cooking with her kids, Harper (6) and Chandler (4), and husband, David.

As evidenced by the food tips in A Guide to Happy Family Camping (Good Books), and the recipes in A Guide to Happy Family Gardening (Good Books), Tammerie believes good food is integral to good fun.

Now, in her third book, A Guide to Happy Family Cooking, Tammerie provides lots of Recipe and Resource information about foods to mix, make, bake, store, freeze, give . . . and enjoy to help your family's children and adults cook together happily.

Tammerie is a native Texan, nine-year resident of Richardson, recent escapee from a 15-year career in corporate communications, and happy to be spending time writing, doing volunteer work (Peace Mennonite Church, Dallas North Montessori School), and hanging out with her husband and kids, preferably around a bowl of Green Noodles!

She is also a student at Brite Divinity School and Eastern Mennonite Seminary.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Introduction --The Wonder of Dirt

If at this moment you don't have any dirt under your fingernails, you may be wondering, Why garden? One answer is that any garden, no matter how small or limited, presents a season full of miracles you can give to your children--and to yourself. Here are just a few of them.

The first miracle, at least from your children's perspective, is that you will be encouraging them to play with dirt. The smaller the kids, the better they will think this is.

The second miracle is that you'll be in the dirt with them, and you know your kids' favorite thing to do is whatever you're doing. For once, even the little guys won't be in the way. Two-year-olds love to pull weeds; it satisfies their naturally destructive tendencies and your need to weed. Older kids can do anything the garden needs, and, by the end of the season, will be figuring out what's needed without being told. (How's that for a miracle?)

The third miracle is that after all that playing with dirt and dropping little seeds into the dirt, it's time to play with the water hose! And dirty, sweaty old Mom and Dad won't even mind getting sprayed!

The fourth miracle is that a few days or weeks later, some green fuzz and spiky shoots will appear in the dirt.

The fifth miracle is the best of all: you and your kids will get to find out what food really tastes like, right out of the dirt.

If you'd like to offer yourself and your kids a yearful of miracles, this book will help you do it, a season at a time--or instantly, any time of year!

Chapter 1 --Anytime, Instant Gardening

Gardening is a seasonal activity, with plenty to do in every season once you get started. But what if the gardening bug first bites in the middle of a long, hot summer or a blustery winter, and the last thing you want to think about is digging up part of your yard?

Never fear. Any time is the right time for you and your kids to start thinking about gardens. Let's begin with instant, anytime gardening, and then we'll work our way into the seasons that follow.

1. Remember that hydroponic potato you planted in water when you were a grade-school kid? Well, if your kids haven't done it yet, get a potato with some eyes on it and show them how to use toothpicks to suspend it over a jar of water. Set the potato-in-a-jar on a sunny windowsill and see what happens.

2. Garlic also offers fun-with-food possibilities. Put a few garlic cloves into a bowl of water so they can begin to soften and sprout, or use cloves that have already sprouted. Get some small flowerpots (plastic or clay). You can turn this into a real afternoon project by letting each kid decorate his or her own.

Use old spoons or small sand shovels to fill the pots with potting soil. (In the wintertime, kids think doing this in the tub is fun, and cleanup is easier. In the summer, just keep the garden hose handy.)

Give each kid a few garlic cloves to poke into the dirt. If the cloves have already sprouted, poke them in so the green shoots are headed up toward the surface. If the cloves have not sprouted, experiment by poking them in various positions. See which end is up! (Okay, if you must know, the sprout comes out of the pokey end, not the one where the clove was attached to the garlic head.)

3. If it's wintertime, think about ordering your kids a couple of amaryllis bulbs as a holiday gift. Several of the catalogs in the Resources section (pages 71-78) offer bulbs for forcing.

4. In the spring you are liable to see some small trees sprouting in your yard, especially if you live near oaks and squirrels. Help your kids dig up seedlings that sprout from squirrels' buried treasures and put ‘em in a pot. Baby trees make great gifts, whether for a birthday, wedding, housewarming, or even get-well present. Put on a tag with an occasion-specific message, such as Happy birthday from the squirrels and me!

5. Lots of catalogs and garden stores now offer gifts with the theme of garden-in-a-box. These typically feature some potting soil and seeds, sometimes already mixed together, that you can water and sprout on a windowsill. These make great gifts for kids and older folks who may not get out as much as they'd like, and they are even more fun when you make your own. Simply put some potting soil in a pot, or line a bucket with plastic, tie a ribbon around, and present with seeds. The seed packet(s) can be glued to a stick poked into the soil or tied to the pot with the ribbon.

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