In the Garden
It’s spring and the world is alive with color. Flowers and herbs bring beauty and invite bees and butterflies to gather nectar. Vegetable seeds germinate, push through the soil and become tender green stalks and leaves. A garden holds the wonder of growth and invites each of us to help.
Gardens can be any size that fits your home. Maybe you have a few pots with herbs or a marigold sitting in a window. Or you could have a garden the size of a football field that grows all the vegetables your family needs for a year. Whatever the size, gardens bring us color, beauty, food, and butterflies.
Meet Richard, Nancy’s master gardener. Richard created Nancy’s gardens and keeps them in great shape. In the early spring, he removes mulch used to protect the flowers from cold winter temperatures.
With Richard’s expert help, Nancy’s garden has flowers from spring until winter.
This spring, Richard planted milkweed (Asclepias Incarnata) to attract more monarch butterflies and to feed their caterpillars.
Here are Richard’s tips for growing milkweed. Choose a spot in full sun with a little shade in late afternoon. Milkweed grows well in either wet or dry soils. You should plant the root ball at the garden’s soil level. Use your fingers to gently pack soil around root ball to ground level. Water the plant as needed. Fertilize in spring with a little 5-10-5 fertilizer. The interesting seed pods can be used in dried flower arrangements.
We will bring you more photos of the caterpillars and butterflies in Nancy’s garden. As the season changes, Richard will show us how the garden changes.
Parents, do you have questions about plants and gardening?
Is there a strange bug on your tomatoes?
Are you hoping to grow the Great Pumpkin?
Do you want more butterflies in your garden?
What insects or birds do you want?
Would you like help?
Richard will gladly help you.
Write your questions in the “Comment” box.
Send us photos of your garden to bloomingscientists@nancylarson.com.
We’d love to see how your garden grows.
Happy Digging in Dirt!
— Madon Dailey
* Note: By submitting your questions, comments, and pictures to us you are giving us permission to post them on this blog for others to view. And please, only send us pictures that belong to you. (We can’t post someone else’s work without permission.)
