Our Sunflower House!

A Sunflower House is an awesome garden experience to work on with the little ones in your life!

Our dreams of a sunflower house started when I checked out a copy of Roots Shoots Buckets and Boots by Sharon Lovejoy. What a magical book! With soft watercolor illustrations and easy to read instructions (she calls them 'recipes'), Lovejoy showed us such wonderful ideas: a pizza patch, a tub of potatoes, a butterfly garden. This book is such an amazing tool for drawing kids into gardening, that I actually bought a copy of it. We like looking the pictures and reading about the ideas during story time. 

The illustrations for a Sunflower House project drew us in immediately. A clubhouse made of sunflowers! The kids were all as mesmerized by the idea as I was, and we started making big plans that very day. This 'RECIPE' is not from Roots Shoots Buckets and Boots, but it looks great, too, check it out!



Here are Noah and Ella, measuring our space:

  

Now, things did not go as smoothly as I'd hoped, in the beginning. It took us a lot of tedious labor just to prepare the trench into which the seeds would eventually go. With the first plunge of our trowels into the soil, we realized we were actually digging into a bed of stones. Using a large shovel and several trowels, we spent hours (spread out over several days) scraping out stones, filling our little wheelbarrow, emptying it, repeating. I simply could not believe how many little stones could take the space of a tiny trench!

Here we are, working on our trench:

 


Next we filled the trench with soil.

 

The most exciting part came when we put in the seeds. We had several different varieties of sunflowers (which I had found at the dollar store for 3/1.00!). We followed Lovejoy's 'recipe' for measuring out the space between each seed, and alternating varieties in order to create a variegated wall of flowers. This took much more concentration than I had expected (I ended up with quite a headache, actually).

THEN the struggles really began. Within two days, almost all of our seeds had been very obviously sabotaged. Only little, empty holes remained. Some critter had come to feast, and I can't say I blamed them. I mean honestly, there is not a much more tasty seed to eat than a sunflower seed! I was chagrined to think of all the concentration that had gone into the careful measuring, counting, planning—all for the benefit of some tiny paws (or beaks) set on indiscriminate devouring. We put more seeds in. This time, we just sorta kinda followed a plan. The holes left by little digging paws showed us where to replace the seeds, so no measuring.

Result of planting effort #2? Almost every seed, dug out and eaten. A few of seeds that had survived the first planting were starting to sprout. Out of those, 2 had been sliced, I'm assuming by cutworms.

We were already into the 3^rd week of attempting to start our sunflower house, and feeling a bit gloomy. I had an 'aha' moment, after stewing for an entire evening about the critters that had found a free buffet in the yard. I thought we could start the seeds indoors, and then after the plants were bigger, stronger and less vulnerable to attack, we could transplant them into the trench.

For 2 whole weeks, we nursed the indoor sunflowers sprouts. By now we are pretty good at taking care of indoor starts—and I had confidence in our success due to the wild success of our tomatoes (which we started from seed this year and were at that point really starting to take off outside in the garden).

The day came for the transplant. Lovingly, gently, we put all the seedlings into their homes (and at this point I was still sort of trying to alternate varieties as we went along).

AND....within the DAY, all the sprouts DIED.

By now, my enthusiasm had been transformed into pure and utter frustration. I still wanted the kids to get a chance to have a sunflower house. I still believed in this project and could still see, in my mind, the magical playspace we had dreamed of. They had begun to look at me suspisciously whenever I talked of our sunflower house plans. They didn't trust that the whole idea was even true anymore, and probably thought it was all a fairy tale. The project was no longer something they were thrilled about, so I sort of had to forge on with this one on my own, still determined.

I took the rest of the seeds that I had (plus I went the dollar store and bought the rest of their packets—not a huge loss at 3 packs for a dollar), and went on a seed planting frenzy. No measuring, no careful sorting and alternating. I just took those seeds and started pushing them into the ground, one after another, going around the perimeter several times. I may have cursed at the seeds a couple times (so much for tender loving care), so it's a good thing the kids weren't around during this planting.

But hey...there is a happy ending after all! We'll just sorta skip over the 'dark moments of the sunflower house project' and pretend it all went the way it was meant to. ;)

Sprouts began to not only come up, but thrive. Critters stayed out of sight (I am pretty certain the neighbor's trusty cat had a lot to do with this. And I am also pretty certain we praised that cat profusely when we saw him stalking a chipmunk). I began to really believe that we might have success, and the kids began to notice that something was happening with our seemingly abandoned project.

Fast forward to now—after weeks of tending the finally successful sunflowers--and the dream has become a reality. Once the sprouts established themselves all they needed was occasional watering. The kids now have a magical place to play. With no prompting from me, I find them in there with their snacks, books, or just hanging out.

The bees have come to our flowers in droves. Initially this alarmed a few of the kids, who are terrified of anything that buzzes. I explained that the bees won't usually sting if they are left alone, and that they have a wonderful job--helping all plants to keep growing and thriving. The kids have learned to get excited when they see a bee happily crawling around on one of the flower's faces.

We can see the sunflower house from Noah's bedroom window, which is a nice touch. When it's not quite time to go outside for the day, the kids can peer out the window at the wonderful thing we have created! All the struggle, hard work, and frustrations were absolutely worth it, and you can bet that a sunflower house will grow in our yard every summer from now on.

Apple to Jar, All in One Day

This past Friday was very busy in the Little Hands Kitchen!

We didn't harvest a thing from the garden, but we took a little trip out of the suburbs and into the country. My Uncle Loren (gardening guru, and one of my heroes) has apple and pear trees on his property, and he gave us permission to come do a little picking. When we arrived, we were amazed by the sheer amount of apples available to us, for free. They were beautiful!

 

We filled two 5-gallon buckets (I would have kept going, but the kids were getting wiped out!). We also picked 5 pounds of mini-pears while we were there (not pictured, but trust me). The sweetness of those mini pears is something I can attest to from prior experience; there was no leaving without taking some magical sweet pears with us.

Once we were home, and had gathered up the rest of the gang from preschool (Rylee and Brady were the lucky two who were out of school due to teacher-in-service, so they were my apple helpers), it was time to get to work.

First we filled a pot with chopped apples. We didn't need to core the apples, since we'd be using our new Roma Food Mill, but to mix things up a bit, sometimes we'd go ahead and just core/slice them with an apple slicer-do-hicky. Rylee liked showing her strength with it.

In batches, we put the apples into a pot with about an 2 inches of water at the bottom. We'd start the apples boiling, then turn down the heat and let them cook until we could poke a fork into them.

The mini-pears were put into a large pot whole. All we did was remove the stems. I had already made a batch of pear sauce with these magical little pears and I knew that the food mill could handle them whole.

When the apples/pears were soft enough, we scooped them out into a colander in the sink (reserving the water to reuse for the next batch of apples), then processed them in the food mill. This is the VERY BEST part of the applesauce project. The kids (and me too) LOVE to see the soft apples squish into the hopper and separate into a pile of mushy skins/seeds, and a bowl full of luscious sauce. The mill is easy to operate, and the handle is easy enough for even the 3 year old to turn.

The sauce making was more time-consuming than I had thought it would be, and we only got through a small portion of our apples. In one day we were able to process 9 pints of applesauce, and still had a TON of apples left.

Here are 7 of the 9 pints. One went home with Rylee. One broke in the hot water bath as I tried to can it...oops! Everything has a learning curve!

These apples are so amazingly delicious, that we have been eating them right out of the bucket.

One of those pint jars (or maybe more) will be going to Uncle Loren, since they were his apples! Many thanks to him for allowing the Little Hands Garden to use up some of this wonderful fruit. I will can a few more batches, and we will be enjoying the applesauce all winter long. This stuff blows the store-bought stuff out of the water COMPLETELY! We didn't even have to add any sugar or cinnamon.

Here is a link to the site that helped me figure out how to make/can the sauce. I am a complete newbie, so sites like this are essential. My mom told me she has canned 'tons' of applesauce. Of all my childhood memories, this is one I simply do not remember! Thanks to the internet, I figured out the basics, and it wasn't hard. Time consuming? Maybe a little. But once you taste a bit of fresh, homemade applesauce, you will realize that going through the apple-to-jar experience is SO worth your time. The link above suggests using different types of apples for a sweet sauce. We used the magical little pears to suit this purpose. The apples alone are delicious, but the super-sweet pears added just enough bursting flavor so that we didn't have to add any other ingredients.

Now get out there and find yourself some apples! Find an orchard HERE, or ask around to see if anyone has an apple tree that they would let you pick from. You'd be amazed how much fruit goes to waste. I know of two apples trees in my own neighborhood that produce lots of fruit, only to fall to the ground to rot. Knock on doors, and ask for permission. Make some delicious applesauce, and have some fun!