How does your garden grow?

This past week the temperature has been in the triple digits again, and everyone and everything here is wilting, including my garden. Keeping the containers from drying out would be more of a challenge if my patio got more sun. Watering once a day is critical, and if we had more sun, I would need to be watering more than once a day.

Watering the preschool garden is lots of fun too. We don't have automatic sprinklers, so we water with a hose and movable sprinklers. The children also love to help water. When we are out in the garden, we turn on the hose, the children grab the watering containers, fill them up, and water their favorite plants. The challenge is to make sure all the plants get watered when we do it that way.

Many of the girls love to water flowers. They will pour the water directly on the flower. It doesn't matter if the flower is close to where the roots are growing or if the flower is out at the end of the plant. When they choose to water the squash and pumpkin flowers way out at the end of the plant, the water usually goes to the weeds rather than into the box where the roots are growing.

Each child seems to have a favorite plant that they like to water, and often several of them want to water the same plant. So the strawberries and sunflowers get plenty of water, the tomatoes, carrots, chives, and mint need some extra attention from the teachers to make sure they get any water.

We do manage to get all the plants watered, in spite of the challenges, and so far, they are surviving and growing well.