Luckily, it was very sunny out this past weekend with temperatures in mid 70’s. You usually want to wait until the sun is out a lot and temperature is above 50 degrees or so every day. The warmer the better! Since we’ve had a cold spring this year, the planting had to be done a little later in the season. The point is that you don't want the seed to freeze and you don't want the sun to bake it or evaporate water too fast.

The distinguishing feature of organic gardening is that we use only naturally-occurring materials for all phases of the growing operation: improving the soil, fertilizing, preventing and solving pest problems. The improvement of soil with abundant amounts of organic materials and natural mineral supplements is of great importance to your success as an organic gardener. In general, organic matter is the remains of plants and animals. The organics you apply to the soil are most often in the form of bird and animal manures, plant manures, cover crops, compost, sea products, and mixed organic fertilizer. With suitable conditions, organic matter is broken down by organisms living in the soil, such as fungi, bacteria, algae, molds, insects and earthworms. In the process, nitrogen and other nutrients are converted to forms a plant can use. Bird and animal manures are generally available to home gardeners, either as processed, composted products in bags, or in some raw form. Generally, manures from animals that eat vegetation are preferred to that from meat-eating animals, for sanitary reasons.

For this planting session we used Miracle Gro Organic Choice Garden Soil which contains an exclusive mix of 100% organic ingredients: compost, sphagnum peat moss and manure. The plants used were a courtesy of Wilklow Orchards. We had a variety of different fruit and vegetable to plant. Each one of us picked what we liked best and started the planting. The kids seemed to mostly prefer the fruity plants.

We started by putting the soil into the big pots and gently putting the plants in. Once the kids learned the basics of it, they eagerly planted all the rest of the plants. They all seemed to enjoy it. This would be a great activity to do with your family on a weekend as it brings people together and everyone feels valuable in the process. After we were done planting, it was time to start watering the plants. The girls were tired after 5 minutes, so the brave little man took over.

All in all the whole process took about 2 hours. The sun was starting to set at that point and we all gathered together glazing at the fruits of our labor so to speak. It was a fun and a worthy time spent indeed!