Are you ready to jump in and plant a garden in your backyard? If you have the space to move beyond an indoor garden or an outside vertical garden, a square foot garden is an ideal way for a beginning gardener to get started on the gardening adventure.

A square foot garden divides a small space into one foot squares with only one type of plant in each square. Larger plants, like tomatoes, are planted just one to a square, while smaller plants, like carrots, are planted with many (16) to a square. The method is very efficient in use of seeds, use of space, and use of water. Because it is so easy to understand and so encouraging, this method works well for gardeners who are intimidated or overwhelmed by the idea of growing their own food.

The space needed can be quite small, but the method is scalable by just repeating the 3′ x 3′ or 4′ x 4′ squares separated by spaces big enough to walk through and to stand while you tend your garden. Your squares can be dug into the ground or planted in a raised bed frame. (The official guidelines put the garden in a frame, but you can adapt the method.) The grid lines between each square foot section can be made with string or something more permanent, like strips from old blinds. You have a lot of choices within the basic guidelines for square foot gardening.

Best of all, you can start today. Draw a 3×3 grid, add dots to represent your crops (1, 4, 9, or 16, depending on plant size), then start building the frame. You can begin in any season.

Square Foot Gardening Resources

• All New Square Foot Gardening by Mel Bartholemew. This is the square foot gardening bible.
• Square Foot Gardening Foundation. This foundation, started by the Square Foot Gardening author, aims “to end world hunger by reaching out to families and teaching them how to grow healthy food for their daily meals.”
• “How to Build a Square Foot Garden,” Frugal Dad. Using the method outlined by Mel Bartholemew, this gardener added a drip irrigation system. Photos and detailed descriptions.
• My Square Foot Garden. If you are wondering how to garden for your climate, look for planting plans from many different gardeners. The plans are so simple to create and so inspiring to look at.

Image © Claus Mikosch | Dreamstime.com

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If you planted a garden with your child earlier this year, she’s probably been eager to sample the results. Now is the season for fresh garden snacks with children.

Eat It Fresh and Raw

Fresh fruits and vegetables straight from the garden can be such an intense taste experience that they become lifelong memories. I remember very well trailing after my mother through our garden, tasting as we went. In particular, I always remember biting into a tomato. I don’t like tomatoes, and that is the only time in my young life that I remember voluntarily eating one. I just remember how incredibly good it felt to bite through the sun-warmed flesh of the tomato before the taste exploded through me. This one little fresh fruit (or vegetable, depending where you want to come down on that issue) is the anchor for all of my other childhood garden memories.

Now, without giving it much thought, we’ve put our mostly likely garden snack foods next to our main doors near our house. Because our herbs are next to the door we use most frequently, my children often stop to eat mint or fennel on their way inside. We have planted grapes by our front door, but they are only two years old and aren’t fruiting yet. I like to picture guests snacking on our grapes as they wait for us to answer the door.

Walk through your garden with your child and see what there is to sample and taste as a snack.

Choose Dark Vegetables for Micronutrients

We know dark, raw vegetables provide phytonutrients that help our bodies repair damage on a cellular level. For our smoothie series a year ago, we focused on the 5-7 color categories that fruits and vegetables can be divided into, each category rich in a particular set of phytonutrients.

Dark blue and purple foods can contain anthocyanins, which contain antioxidants that help protect cells from damage. From Sour Purple Blast Smoothie.

Carrots in particular are an incredible source of Vitamin A—or, rather, provitamin A carotenoids that can form Vitamin A. Alpha carotene is a cancer fighter, and beta carotene promotes repair of damaged DNA. You probably know that beta carotene will help your eyesight, which is related to this repair function. From Earth Orange Smoothie.

Green plants have chlorophylls, which play an important role in photosynthesis—capturing energy from sunlight and converting it into chemical energy. The phytonutrients in our smoothie included the carotenoid lutein, which works with zeaxanthin (both from raw spinach) for eye health. From Easy Green Smoothie.

As you are planting your garden then later strolling through for a snack, keep in mind that a variety of colors means an abundance of vitamins, minerals, and micronutrients.

Quick Vegetable Kebab Snack

It’s cooling down. My children have been requesting hot snacks and lunches, so it is time to put together simple, warm foods. They do like raw vegetables, but one of the ways we create variety straight from our garden is with quick grilled vegetable kebabs. My children love crunchy grilled vegetables, and it’s a great alternative to fried foods.

• Garden vegetables – Use whatever you have in your garden, like zucchini, tomato, onion, sweet pepper, and summer (yellow) squash.
• Oil, vinegar, and spices for marinade
• Skewers – We use metal skewers because they are easiest to reuse.

Rather than buying anything special for this snack, it’s an adventure for a young child to go out into the garden and eat what he finds. Collect vegetables early in the morning, then prepare a marinade using oil, vinegar, lemon juice, mustard, salt, pepper, and any herbs you collect. Cut up the vegetables into large, bite-sized pieces. Place the marinade and the vegetables in a container for 2-3 hours. Shake it around to be sure that the vegetables are coated.

When it is time for a late morning snack, help your child skewer just a few of each kind of vegetable. Vegetable kebabs are wonderful grilled, but we try to keep snacks simple since we’re only cooking a small amount of food. We broil until the zucchini starts to steam and brown because we like the texture of the crunchy crust outside and the hot, soft inside.

I love the idea of simple snacks from the garden because it makes such a profound connection for children. They help grow the food with their own hands. As they eat and enjoy the foods in simple ways—either raw or just cooked but still recognizable—they begin to realize how much power they have to care for their own bodies and their expanding world.

Image © Michael Zysman | Dreamstime.com

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This is a budget-friendly winter soup that costs us about $.35 per person. The total cost of the aromatics (onion, celery, carrot) is about $.50 at my store. The rest of the vegetables are about $1.00; Kale about $1.00; and Wheatberries about $.25 ($.89/pound). Total = ~$2.75. This is enough for two meals for my family of four, so that comes about to a rough $.35/person, or $1.10/person if you add store-bought country bread like we did.

Of course, if you buy a goose and pay full price, you have a much more expensive soup. We used what was left of the birds from our holiday meal—our almost-like-Peking duck and goose with enough for company. In this case, reusing saves us from facing a big price tag.

Ingredients

2 ducks + 1 goose, thoroughly picked over from a previous meal

1 Lg Onion, diced
2 Lg sticks Celery, roughly diced
2 Lg Carrot, roughly diced
1 Sm Parsnip, diced
½ cup Celery Root, diced
1 Leek, diced and washed (used vinegar to get all of the sand out)

½ cup Wheatberries (uncooked)
about 4 cups Kale, stalks removed and chopped to about 1-2″ square

In this case, we just added salt and pepper because the ducks and goose had our homemade Peking duck flavorings (ginger, soy, honey, sesame oil).

Stock

• Break the birds into pieces and put in a large stock pot.
• Cover with water.
• Bring to the boil and simmer for 2-3 hours.
• Strain off liquid into a large bowl.
• Remove fat from top. We use a fat separator jug. Or, put it in th refrigerator overnight. The fat sets up, and you can just remove it. Reserve at least a few tablespoons of the fat to saute the vegetables.
• Set stock aside.

Meat

• Pick any usable meat off the bones.
• Dice.
• Set meat aside.

Wheat

• Put the wheatberries in a small saucepan and cover with 2-3 cups of water.
• Bring to a boil.
• Simmer for about an hour covered.
• Strain off the liquid. You might be tempted to keep and use the, but I find it bitter. I don’t keep it.

If you use pearl Barley, don’t pre-cook. Half an hour in the soup is enough.

Prepare Vegetables

• Chop, dice and otherwise prepare the vegetables.

Combine

Now you have stock, meat, wheat, and vegetables prepared.

• In a large stock pot, add the reserved fat and the prepped vegetables (minus kale).
• Saute.
• Once they have a hint of brown, add the stock a little a time in order to cook off any caramelized bits off the bottom.
• Add the rest of the stock.
• Add the meat and wheat.
• Simmer for about half an hour until the vegetables are cooked the way you like them.
• Add the Kale 5 minutes before you are ready to eat.

I love the texture of the kale and wheatberries along with the softness of this flavoring. It’s a great, warming soup without being too heavy. Perfect lunch on a cold winter day after the kids have been playing in the snow all morning.

Eat half. Freeze half. Leave at least an inch at the top of the container for the frozen soup to expand.

Today is Day #7 of my new Save Green Habit: run the stairs every day.

I’m running up and down stairs to avoid using a treadmill or stair climber. The aerobic part is easy compared to just having the muscle power to get up the stairs on the 15th time or so. Still running at least 3-4 times every day, so I’m on track with the habit. My children have been great about marking their habits on the calendar, but I think they took the day off yesterday.

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Today, my son decided he didn’t want to eat lunch at all. I suggested he just have a smoothie. It worked! I even let him choose and didn’t try to sneak in a broccoli stem or a handful of beans. He choose peaches from our neighbors’ tree, a banana, and coconut. He and his dad opened a coconut a few days ago, and he’s been trying to figure out how to use up all of that nice coconut flesh. When I asked him what he liked best about it, though, it wasn’t the two special ingredients but the banana.

My son’s favorite smoothie is anything with a banana.

Over the past few weeks, we’ve covered smoothie tools as well as the intense nutrition blast of dark purple smoothies, earthy orange smoothies, and easy green smoothies. Have you experimented? What do you like? What is your child’s favorite smoothie?

We would love to share your recipes and tips for this easy, nutritious meal.

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This week, my children and I made green smoothies. We usually mix colors and get sort of muted orange (a lot of carrots) or dull purple, but it has been great to see how bright we could make our smoothies and still taste great. I avoided vegetables that tend to be bitter in smoothies, like broccoli, and vegetables that don’t add much color, like celery and cucumbers. We ended up with a very smooth taste, probably because of the avocado. Sweet enough that kids loved it and veggie enough that parents loved it.

• 1/2 green apple
• 1/2 avocado
• 12 medium spinach leaves
• 12 grapes
• 2 large mint leaves
• 1 banana
• 1/4 soy milk

Green plants have chlorophylls, which play an important role in photosynthesis—capturing energy from sunlight and converting it into chemical energy. The phytonutrients in our smoothie included the carotenoid lutein, which works with zeaxanthin (both from raw spinach) for eye health.

Also, the spinach is a huge source of Vitamin A and folic acid; the green apple is a good source of Vitamin C; avocado is high in Vitamin C, Vitamin B6, and several other vitamins; and banana is high in manganese, Vitamin C, and Vitamin B6.

I’ve noticed a lot of my friends using liquid, vegetable-based vitamins. The best choice in making sure children have a balanced diet is to give them an abundant variety of fresh, whole foods. Smoothies are just an easy way to give your child several servings of vitamin-, mineral-, and phytonutrient-rich foods in one sitting.

As interest in color-related nutrition increases, so does research. It is likely we will know much more in the future about the exact benefits phytochemicals (plant chemicals). In the meantime, we know that it is important to get as many intensely colored vegetables and fruits in our children’s diets as possible.

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This week, my children and I put together an intense orange smoothie. When shopping we looked specifically for orange foods to add, and we decided not to be obvious and add oranges. We ended up with:

• 1 medium carrot
• 1 golden beet
• 1 cup of golden raspberries
• 4″ of golden chard (small at their request)
• 1 large nectarine
• 1 banana
• 1/4 cup of soy milk
• a couple of Tablespoons of yoghurt

The color of our smoothie was quite golden. The children said it tasted strongly of beets, but the husband said that raspberries were the dominant taste. We definitely tasted the earthy golden beet, but there was a lot of sweet fruit to lighten up the intensity. We usually use a banana to add that smooth sweetness. The soy milk and yoghurt just make the mixture liquid enough to drink. In the end, it was an earthy orange.

Carrots in particular are an incredible source of Vitamin A—or, rather, provitamin A carotenoids that can form Vitamin A. Alpha carotene is a cancer fighter, and beta carotene promotes repair of damaged DNA. You probably know that beta carotene will help your eyesight, which is related to this repair function.

The nectarines are also a good source of Vitamin A. Raspberries add quite a bit of Vitamin C. The banana adds a blast of Potassium, though most of these fruits and vegetables, including the beets and chard in particular, are high in Potassium.

My children rejected the idea of adding too much chard, but we added a bit of beautiful golden chard. (I’ll drench the rest in apple cider vinegar, and they’ll love it.)

We’ve learned that one wrong move can really ruin a smoothie. When we added too much rhubarb this week, none of us had an easy time choking it down. For that smoothie-gone-wrong, I added a few more blueberries for some sweetness, and we froze it in popsicle molds. They’ve finished the popsicles, so it must not be so bad when it looks like a treat.

Lately, we use smoothies for our mid-morning pick-me-up. After we’ve done a couple of hours of school, I see them start to droop. The three of us pick through our kitchen to find what we have, and we experiment. The change of activity is a big help. They know I’m trying to stuff them full of vegetables, too, and they don’t resist. They enjoy seeing how far we can take ground up vegetables.

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You know your child needs a variety of foods. You know fruits and vegetables are good for you. The reasons why are many. I want to focus on just one thread through the fabric of nutrition as we make Monday morning smoothies: phytonutrients.

We’ve learned a lot more about phytonutrients in the past ten years through science and popular press. To make the case simply, these plant-based chemicals are related to the pigment they use to protect themselves from intense sunlight and other threats. We eat colorful fruits and vegetables, and we share that protection.

Eat dark fruits and vegetables in a variety of colors for the most benefit and eat the foods fresh. Processing, even cooking, can destroy or remove some phytochemicals. This is another reason raw fruits and vegetables in smoothies are a great way to make sure your child has the most possible benefit from their food.

Fruits and Vegetables can be divided into 5-7 color categories, each rich in a particular set of phytonutrients. Today, we’re going for the dark blue and purple foods that contain anthocyanins, which contain antioxidants that help protect cells from damage.

On to the food.

I didn’t think too much about ingredients. I just pulled out everything intensely blue or purple that I had in my kitchen. I added:

• 1 small beet
• 4 cherries
• 1 plum from a neighbor’s tree
• 3 strawberries
• 1/4 cup cranberry juice (not cocktail but the intense straight juice)
• 1/2 cup frozen blueberries
• 1/4 cup plain yoghurt
• 4 ice cubes

Wow, this was great! Much better than last week’s carrot / spinach smoothie for the first set of photos, which was still good. The Sour Purple Blast is intense, sour, and smells like dirt like a good beet should.

If you are going for a purple blast of your own, try a variation. Frozen fruit helps make a smoothie very slushy, which is very popular on a hot summer day. Cranberry juice is very intense, so only use it if your kids have a high tolerance for sour (like mine do). I didn’t use many ice cubes this time, so our purple blast was more intense than most of our smoothies. For a younger child, I would add a banana as a base or use a lot of ice cubes to lower the intensity.

If you try a great purple smoothie, please share your recipe in the comments.

Vita-Mix (again) has a simple version of the 7-color food chart that can be your simple guide to color and nutrition.

Thanks to my daughter for the name “Sour Purple Blast.”

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Our simplest recipe is agua fresca (fresh water) with just water, ice, and fresh strawberries. My daughter loves this. She learned about it when she was learning Spanish, and the characters in her story gave the recipe in Spanish. Now, she associates this light drink with homeschool time.

Last week I made my son a really simple smoothie of banana, milk, and ice, he said, “Are you sure there’s no sugar in it?” No. “Wow. It’s good for you? That was really good. Are there more bananas?” For him, he’s just drinking a milk shake.

These are two of the simplest recipes, but with a smoothie there is great potential for adding more of the fresh foods that your child needs in their diet and making sure it tastes great.

Encourage Adventurous Taste

When they were small, maybe one to three years old and still breastfeeding but not exclusively breadfed, I didn’t pump breastmilk for them if I was going to be away from them. If they went out with grandma or went with daddy on a day out, I would send them with brown juice, a mix of carrots, whatever greens we had on hand (romaine lettuce, spinach, dandelion greens), and black strap molasses (for iron) in a soy milk base. Because they have been drinking juice and smoothies since they were young, they are quite willing to drink my concoctions now as they get older—especially if I add enough ice to make it look and feel like ice cream.

My children are generally willing to follow our one taste rule (you can’t know if you like something or not unless you’ve had at least one taste). Beyond that, they choose their own food. I encourage, but I don’t force. Because I can usually encourage them to be adventurous, they are willing to try experimental smoothies and enjoy them—or just be honest about it and help adjust the taste when one fails the test.

The Tool: Your Blender

When I had just a low-power, store-bought blender, I had a tough time grinding ice or juicing vegetables. I had daily green juice when I was pregnant with my second child, with varied ingredients depending on the needs of that trimester. My poor, kind husband juiced everything in a juicer that removed the pulp and took at least half an hour to clean every time. After the baby was born, my husband gradually lost his motivation and time to embark on the juicing and cleaning adventure. When my household blender stopped doing more than just rounding off the corners of ice cubes, smoothies because more rare as well.

This all changed when I got a professional-grade Vita-Mix. I saw a demonstration at a local fair, and I fell in love. It was quite expensive compared to all of the other blenders and juicers I had used, so I waited until I saw it at the same fair the next year. I knew that baby was mine. I love my Vita-Mix. It mixes, grinds, and blends any food or ice I give it. You don’t have to have a high-end blender like this to make great smoothies, but it helps.

I can see that my blender has lower speeds, but I don’t use them. I’m not even sure what they are for. Why would I not just knock those ice cubes into submission. When my husband saw me buzzing up a banana, he said, “I don’t dare use that setting.” That’s the difference between us, darling. I don’t have any other speed.

Over the next few weeks, I am going to post a Monday morning smoothie with information about a child’s nutritional needs and how you can best meet them.

So, gather your tools! Get ready for the ice cream that’s good for you. Get ready to make green, purple, and orange juices so good your child will say, “That’s good for me? May I have some more?”

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