After weeks spent intermittently turning a piece of lawn into a garden (without the assistance of a roto-tiller) I finally got to planting today. We were out shopping for other things when I asked the 2-year old if she wanted to go home or buy flowers and plants. Then we spent the next 15 minutes of the drive with her saying "flowers" every 2 minutes.
Red and green bell peppers, pole beans, zucchini, cucumbers, basil, lemon thyme and regular and heirloom plum tomatoes. The little one was extremely excited with the bean seeds (another phrase she repeated 100 times or so for the rest of the afternoon). Hopefully they'll come up and keep her interest in the garden, and mine. Since we don't have a fence up yet, my other great hope is that the neighborhood bunnies don't attack overnight.
E enjoyed planting the seeds, and then was impatiently demanding "next" every time I stopped to do something silly like cover a plant with soil. Picking the flats of plants up by the leaves, walking without looking through the garden, sitting down on top of pepper plants. She was scolded numerous times this afternoon with absolutely no effect and probably still has no idea why. Any suggestions to train a little one on watching where she walks?
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I have no idea if this would actually work or not, but in theory it should. How about creating a special path for her to walk on? I.e. put river stones or wood chips down where she can walk and instruct her only to walk on the "colored" path. I suppose if you could color the rocks/wood chips it wold even be better. OH! what if you could get her to paint (or color with chalk, my little one LOVES chalk)some stepping stones. By decorating the special stones it will allow her to take ownership and see it as her special thing. I would also recommend using some string/twine and some stakes to create a visual guide of where one can walk. She probably doesn't understand the direction of "don't walk there." With the twine created rows you can now say, "don't cross the string." My husband recommends an "invisible fence" :)
Good ideas all. I tried laying down newspaper, both as a visual path and semi-biodegradable weed-block and having her put dirt and rocks on it but then she refused to walk on her handiwork. Who'd have thought that dirt-covered newspaper would engender such vehement artistic temperament. Go figure.
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