How To Plant An Awesome Earth Day Garden

earth day garden image with text overlay.hOw to crete anearth Day Garden with CaptivatingCompass.com

Easy! 5 Steps To Creating An Awesome Earth Day Garden

So a couple of weekends ago the government canceled our recycling and…now we have way too much recycling. They have put a stop to almost all garbage collection; they’re going to collect food waste, and they’re going to collect what we call ‘the green bin’ which is the garbage that goes to the landfill. And that’s it. So we needed to come up with a solution and celebrating Earth Day was the perfect time to make it happen with an awesome Earth Day garden.

They aren’t collecting anything else for the foreseeable future. So right now we have paper, plastic and glass recycling piling up at home, not to mention the restless, bored kid syndrome that is taking over.

An Update From The Chief Gardener…He’s 11.

Hi guys! A little update on our garden so far! Our plants have been growing really well, but for some reason the garlic (I think) their shoots have been turning yellow. The potatoes had some trouble growing but then we put special soil on top and watered it really well, and now they are growing fast! We also planted the seedlings of the french bean in a new small patch. Overall, our plants have been growing nicely, and I hope we can harvest next month or the month after. ~Ian, May 2020

three main problems and one perfect Earth Day Garden solution.

It became our Save The Earth Day and our sanity as we tackled these three challenges you can solve with your homeschool science lessons for Earth Day.

Problem #1

Too much recycling
Recycling not being collected
What to do with the recycling

Solution: Reduce & Reuse

Compact recycle by cutting containers apart so we could stack them/lay them flat.

Here’s what we did:

Cut plastic bottles to be used for gardening & make them take up less space in the recycle bin
Create protective water barriers for seedling containers
Create cloches with the tops of the plastic bottles

image of recycle bi full of plastic containers to be used in Earth Day Gardening at www.captivatingcompass.com

How To Reduce, Reuse & Recycle For An Awesome Earth Day Garden

How we did it.

First, we needed to identify why we had the recycling problem in the first place. We needed to see if we could find an easy solution.

Reduce

The main reason that we had too much recycling is that we buy so many empty bottles of sparkling water. It’s true, about eight bottles a week!

Bottled water is affordable and we like to drink it. It’s better for us than soda. But it has become a problem now that we have this recycling issue. So what do we do about it?

Reuse – Celebrate Earth Day with Recycled seed planters, cloches, and protective sleeves for egg carton seedling holders.

To put it simply, just cup the plastic bottles up & turn them into something usable.

How to use plastic bottles as planter pots in your awesome Earth Day Garden

Start with a regular 2 litre (or any size really)
Cut off the bottom bits to be used as seed planters. You can even drill holes in the bottom to improve drainage.
Cut off the top bits for cloches to put over the sections cut off to be the seedling planters.
Use the leftover center part as a protective layer under any egg carton seedling trays you may have started. Those egg cartons can damage wood surfaces and begin to decompose rather quickly.

BONUS Any unused centerpieces can be coiled together to save space in the recycle bin. It takes up the same amount of space as one bottle, but it’s 30 bottles!

Yep!, instead of having 30 bottles in our bin we have what equals the space of 1 bottle.

So by cutting the plastic bottles up, we were able to stack the smaller pieces in the middle so that it takes up almost no space in comparison

It takes a little time to cut them up, but as you can see here, Problem #3 (Bored Kid Syndrome) is quickly being eliminated with the creative realization that he can make a difference by reducing and reusing like a boss!

What is a Cloche?

A Cloche is like a mini greenhouse for just 1 or 2 plants and is set on top of the soil the plant is in. In this case, the cloche goes over the plastic seedling container.

Why Garden Cloches Are Important In Your Earth Day Garden

The planters, if they are left outside, need to keep the heat in overnight. The tops of the 2 liter bottles work well as cloches for these planters because they fit properly. They are also easy for young children to remove when needed if it gets too hot during the day in these mini-greenhouses. Simply unscrew the cap of the bottle so the warm air can circulate during the day. At night, replace the cap to help keep the heat in the planter overnight

image of earth day gardening supplies on www.CaptivatingCompass.com

How to Slash Your Grocery Bill with an Earth Day Garden

Problem #2 How do we reduce our grocery bill?

Reduced Income
Reduced Product Selection of produce at the Grocery Stores

The second problem identified recently was that the produce selection was getting more expensive. There was also considerably less variety and quantity to choose from each week as we shopped for healthy, Earth Day-friendly food for the family.

So we decided to take this project one step further and improve our diet, and reduce our stress about where to get quality fruits & vegetables at a price we could afford.

Solution: Make a garden plot. Plant seeds.

As we began, there were a few things we needed to consider before we began digging up the backyard willy-nilly.

Things To Consider When Choosing Your Earth Day Garden Plot

Is there good water drainage for the garden plot area?
Does the area have good sunlight? Seven or more hours a day?
Is the soil reasonably good to plant in? Not rocky, clay or too sandy?

How To Create An Earth Day Garden Plot In Your Backyard

Remove the top grass and dirt layer. Some may call this turf or sod.
Dig the dirt up so that it ‘gets all lumpy’. (that’s ‘One Bored Kid’ terminology)
Break up the ‘lumpy’ soil with garden tools until it becomes fine soil.
Create rows by digging trenches for various seeds. (read the seed packets for specific instructions on depth & spacing of seeds)
Cover the seeds up with the soil.

Bored Kid ProTip: Some of the seeds don’t actually need to be covered up completely. Sometimes you just need to sprinkle dirt over them, otherwise, they’re gonna suffocate.

Companion Planting for Bumper Crop Earth Day Gardening

We had cleared the turf, broken up the ‘lumpy’ soil, and were just about ready to plant the seeds when we realized that we wanted to make sure that the seeds that we were planting were next to friends, not foes. It’s called companion planting.

Companion Planting according to the ‘not-so-bored Kid’

Basically, certain plants have friends, and certain plants have foes. And certain plants you can just plant next to each other and they just do nothing – they are neutral.

So there’s competition or benefit that can happen depending on how the seeds and plants are planted in the garden. The competition can be like they’re using the same resources in the soil and there might not be enough for both types of plants to grow well.

I’m not an organic biologist or any of that. But sometimes there’s a reaction that happens that will be detrimental from one plant to the next. For example, you don’t want to grow tomatoes and potatoes next to each other because weird things happen and they don’t grow well next to each other. That’s why we call them foes.

What companion plants did we plant our potatoes next to?

Garlic and onions.

We planted garlic and onions and potatoes and we kind of alternated the rows. Sometimes we put garlic in certain places because they help prevent pests as well.

Before we went on to planting the beets and the lettuce and the spinach and those kinds of things, we put in onions again because they’re neutral right in between the potatoes and the other plants.

We’ve organized and planned it out before we planted it. And then we went ahead and made our rows and trenches and put it all together.

Earth Day Garden Chores – What we do while we wait.

And so now, we’re into this phase of ongoing chores to keep the Earth Day Garden healthy & growing until harvest time. These are the ongoing chores that we need to be doing every day or every couple of days/

We need to water the garden and any planter pots.
We need to remove weeds, and
Be really careful to protect tender seeds at night from the cold.

And then during the day, make sure that the clotches that are on allow them to have a little bit of air and not get too hot, because either extreme is going to potentially kill the seeds or the plant as it grows. (So, that’s when you take off the cap on the top section of the plastic 2-liter container you turned into a cloche).

You may decide to plant more seeds in about 2 weeks if you want a continuous crop
Wait for the harvest.

Another Earth Day Garden Planter Tip

How to make an egg carton seedling planter that won’t ruin your wooden window sill.

Grab an empty egg carton. It’s ok if you get it from the recycle bin and re-use it.
Cut the lid off (you’ll use it later, don’t worry)
Put the soil in the part that holds the eggs.
Plant one seed in each egg hole.
Grab one of the plastic bottle center sections cut earlier for the planter pots (the leftover middle section) cut it down to size to fit in the top of the egg tray as a liner between the egg portion and the egg carton lid.

The plastic section helps hold together the first layer of the egg carton, which can get mushy kind of quickly after watering it for a couple of days. The plastic helps create a more solid base & provides a barrier to protect your countertop or window sill.

Write the name of the seeds on the lid that are planted in the egg carton.
Place it on a sunny window sill that has a bit of a trash bag over it to protect the wood.

So then in a week and a half or so, once those seeds will sprout. When they are ready and it’s not too cold, put them outside during the day to get them used to being outside, and then put them in the garden plot when there is no longer a chance of freezing temperatures at night.

Earth Day Gardening & Boredom Busters For Kids Stuck at Home

Problem #3 One Bored Boy – quite possibly the largest problem of all!

The last problem we had was easily solved as we went about creating our Earth Day garden, and coming up with a plan to compact our recycling to maximize the space in our recycle bin.

So, what was learned in our one bored kid Earth Day Problem Solving activities over the weekend? A lot.

How to reuse plastic bottles as garden pots and other gardening resources.
How to use a drill to make drainage holes in the planter pots.
Planting garlic can keep pests away from the garden plants.
Onions are companion plants for potatoes.
How to compact our own recycling

The Earth Day Garden Is The Perfect Boredom Buster Activity.

Since we’ve got lots of time on our hands, and all you really need is a pair of scissors to make things flat or to cut down soda bottles, this was a perfect activity with so many benefits. Check out An Off-Grid Life for all the resources used to get organized and have fun creating our Earth Day Garden.