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Aliyah Rose Starts a Garden

Aliyah’s garden… little like her, but growing fast!

September 2019 – Now that Aliyah is a great big girl of nearly 4 years old, she has been showing a real interest in gardening. Her mom is an avid gardener, but they’re a little tight on gardening space right now. Luckily, Dave and I had a little patch of ferns and weeds in our backyard that desperately needed the serious love and care that only a small child can provide. It is bordered by concrete edgers and was full of rocks, chunks of coral, and other flotsam when we first started this project.

Here is Jasper working away at the garden, racing the last bit of sunlight of the day.
Here is the garden after Jasper finished digging out the roots, weeds, and the bigger rocks

My heroic nephew Jasper got us off on the right foot during his August visit by digging up the entire garden and pulling out all the weeds, huge roots, and whatever else offended his sensibilities. He spent hours and hours just digging, pulling out roots, and sifting out the weeds from the good soil. He is our garden hero!

Taking a break from all that hard work!
Who’s the bestest big cousin in the whole wide world?

Once the garden was weed free, we forgot about it for a couple of weeks because of other fun stuff, and the weeds started to grow back. But after all the work Jasper did, I was not about to let the garden go to ruin, because that would just be too embarrassing and I hate being embarrassed. I could just picture his dad giving me one of his stern disapproving looks… Sooo, I covered the whole mess with a black tarp to re-kill the weeds and let it percolate for a week. Then Aliyah and I got out there and raked the dirt smooth and hunted for big rocks. Aliyah had so much fun looking for rocks that she turned it into a contest to see who could find the biggest, baddest rock there. Since I had come across a good heavy rock, she helpfully brought it back to the garden, carefully reburied it, and “found” it herself, thereby winning this very important competition. Ok so technically we BOTH won the contest since we both found the same rock. I’m thinking she may be a little bit competitive…

In September, Aliyah took me to the local nursery and began the hunt for fruits and vegetables to plant. She had a whole list of favorites to shop for – broccoli and strawberries, carrots, green beans, mango and orange trees, and maybe some more strawberries because yum! I had to tell her that the trees would be too big, and we would need to find a sunny place along a fence to grow the green beans, so those plants were ruled out for the garden. Then the only plants on her list we could actually find were strawberries, but she didn’t mind.

Aliyah begins her hunt for delicious fruit and vegetable plants
After finding the perfect strawberry plant, she carefully watered it at a little froggie fountain she spotted in the water garden section.
Carrying our new acquisition to the car

So we brought home our baby strawberry plant, and she found the perfect spot for it right in the middle of the garden.

Our little gardener carefully plants her first strawberry.

Dave came out to inspect and pointed out that I had covered up the broken sprinkler pipes he wanted to fix. So poor Dave had to re-dig around the edges of the garden, carefully avoiding our precious lone strawberry plant. He did a great job, and now it will be much easier to keep the garden watered.

Dave repaired the old sprinkler system so we can water the garden easily.

I started putting mulch down but ran out of steam, so that part has to wait until probably the coming weekend. Now we will just have to keep the garden mulched and weed free, and add new plants as we can. I’m thinking we can cut the tops off carrots and plant those, and maybe even try a pineapple top.

Stay tuned for more as the garden grows!