Gardening and Foraging

Due to the pandemic and fear of the food supply becoming disjointed, more people are looking at gardening this year. I'll share a few tips on gardening, but will also delve into the little talked about world of foraging, because there is food everywhere, we've just been told it's a weed.  This will in no way be an exhaustive list of gardening or foraging tips, but hopefully it will be enough to pique your interest and get you started towards a more self sustainable life style.

You don't have to have a lot of land to be successful with gardening.  You can do a few tomato plants on your patio and a little herb garden in your window sill if that's all the room (and interest) you have.  However for those with a larger patio you can vary the size of your planters, growing potatoes in a trash can, a salad bowl garden in a nice planter or a wood pallet turned into a planter for multiple vegetables.

What and when you plant will of course depend on your location.  Here in Virginia we can still get frost as late as May 15. False spring is not uncommon here, so you have to resist the urge to get your vegetables in the ground too early.   Beets, peas, carrots, chard, collard greens and mustard greens can be planted in late February/early March.  Salad greens such as lettuces, spinach, and endive can be planted in early spring and again in early fall.

Potatoes (in VA) should be planted from the last chance of frost until about 6 weeks past that time.  Tomatoes, peppers, squash, melons and cucumbers are best started as seeds indoors in early-mid April and then transplanted outside after the threat of frost is gone.  If a freak freeze does happen after you plant, you'll need to cover your plants to keep the frost from killing them. Old sheets, glass jars, and even plastic shopping bags work well for this task.

Foraging:  A Lost Art

There are lots of edible items around you all the time, but most you'd never consider because you've been told they are weeds.  Here is a a short list of some pretty easy to spot plants that can be of benefit to your diet and budget.

Dandelions:  As we all know, dandelions are pretty prolific.  I personally think they are pretty in a lawn, but I know the majority of people try to kill them.   However, the maligned dandelion packs quite the punch when it comes to nutrients.

One half cup of dandelions contain more calcium than a glass of milk, and more iron than spinach.  One of dandelion greens contains 19mg of Vitamin C, and the leaves contain more Vitamin A than carrots.   Dandelions are also a great source of Vitamin K, potassium, folic acid and magnesium.

The flowers of the dandelion can be used to make jelly and wine, and can be added to salads.  The leaves can be cooked as greens, or added to a salad and the root can be roasted and used to replace coffee.

Violets (and pansies):  These lovely flowers and their leaves are rich in Vitamins A and C. The flowers can be used in salands and also to make jelly.  The leaves can be added to salads or cooked.  Both are natural pain killers.

Henbit: These cute little "weeds" are high in iron and Vitamin K.  These little beauties aid in digestion, reduces fever and can be used to help induce sweating.   The leaves can be eaten raw, used as an herb to season with, or boiled to make a tea.

Lilac bushes smell beautiful and add an intoxicating aroma to flower arrangements.  But did you know you can also make jelly out of those lovely flowers?   You may not get the deep purple color, but the fragrance and taste will be a wonderful addition to your toast and biscuits.

Poppies are a lovely addition to your flower bed, and their seeds are of course edible.  Poppy seeds can be used in cakes, breads, cole slaw and porridge, to name just a few options.

As we all know, aloe vera is great for treating burns (including radiation burns), however it is also edible.  When ingested, aloe vera helps reduce blood sugar, inflammation and help with constipation.  It can be added to salads, poached and juiced to start with.

Like I said, this is not an exhaustive list, but it should get you started if you're so inclined.  All of the "weeds" I've shared here are things that are just in my yard on their own.  Obviously you don't want to use pesticides and weed killer in an area you're going to forage from.  You can also go into the woods to forage for morels, blackberries and nuts.  Always be alert around berry bushes, they are prone to attract snakes, and bears.

How are your food habits changing?

Creation Illustrated - Pine Trees Unit Study (Review)

Creation Illustrated, after 25 years in print, has started offering a new product line of nature based unit studies as well as digital copies of their magazine.   Today I'll be sharing our experience in reviewing their Pine Tree Unit Study.

This is a pretty straight forward, 16 page unit study (including a 3 page answer key), geared towards students grades 5-8, but it could be used with other students as well.   The study includes links to reading resources (including a link to Creation Magazine Fall 2017 digital edition) and educational videos.   Also covered in the unit study are vocabulary and spelling, Bible study, geography, science and math connections, writing and penmanship, art and a crossword puzzle.    While this is a complete unit study, it isn't tedious or boring, nor does it cover every single thing you ever hope to know about pine trees, but it's a great launching point to get you started and give you a firm foundation. 

 

As expected, everything in the unit study is taught from a Biblical, creation based world view.  However, for those who may have a different world view, the vocabulary, spelling, geography, pine tree identification, writing, art and search puzzle can be taught without crossing over.

We used this unit study as a supplement to our botany class that I'm teaching at our weekly co-op.   We mostly focused on the geography (where different types of pine trees grow), the science study, math and the introduction of Fibonacci numbers in nature and the artwork as we did some nature journaling.  Since the unit is a download, I could print off the pages I wanted to use each week and skip the ones that I opted not to use.  Our co-op class is only 60 minutes weekly, so I added a segment of this unit study at the end of class for several weeks.   I was surprised that only my kids had ever heard of Fibonacci numbers, so it was good to have something totally new to introduce.

You could do the entire study in one day if you like, or draw it out over one or more weeks depending on your student(s) and your time constraints.   The videos and reading might be a bit much for younger students to get through all at once.    My children, ages 12 and 14, were happy to tag a few extra minutes onto their regularly scheduled school day to knock out a video or two as time allowed.  The links and videos were not an option for us during co-op due to lack of Internet at our facility.

Other available unit studies include topics such as badgers, black bears, dragonflies, fragrances, Joshua tree, manatees and snow.  We also received the snow unit, and we were able to incorporate that unit a bit into our homeschooling as we had our first major snowfall of the year in late March during the review period.  There's a great section on meteorology and the water cycle in this unit, and includes links to the Creation Illustrated Winter 2018 digital edition.  Each unit study is currently available for $6.95 and is a quick and easy  PDF download, making it available immediately.

Here's a sneak peak at the upcoming Creation Illustrated Spring 2018 edition.

To read other Review Crew opinions on this and other unit studies from Creation Illustrated, click here.

A Journey Through Learning Lapbooks (Review)

Lindsey is studying botany this year, both at home and in a co-op setting.  One of the resources we'll be using is the Apologia Botany.  Fortunately we were able to review the Apologia Exploring Creation with Botany Lapbook from the Apologia Curriculum Page at  A Journey Through Learning Lapbooks, and I'm hoping that this will add a nice hands on aspect to our class work at home.   (In order to use this product in a group or co-op setting you need to buy a Classroom/Co-op license.)

This product is one that you download, and you can either get the black and white version or the color version.   We received both for the review, but I don't have a color printer, so we've obviously used the black and white version.  Also coloring the components is one of Lindsey's favorite parts of lapbooking, the writing, not so much.   The download includes a supplies list, clear instructions on creating and folding the various components and on assembling the lapbook itself.    There is also an additional reading list, enrichment pages (book log, plant book report form, What I Have Learned/narration pages) and an answer key at the back so the instructor can make sure students have the correct information to put into each individual booklet.   There is a total of 84 pages to print to complete the lapbook, not including the extras and instructions.

The product is broken up into units, Lessons 1-3, Lessons 4-6, Lessons 7-9 and Lessons 10-12.   On each page, for each lesson there are instructions that tell you exactly what pages to read in the textbook to find the information covered, see below for example.

We did not work hard and fast on this review, since the school term starts close to the end of the review time and that is officially when we'll be learning about botany.   What we did was work on getting the items printed and sorted and grouped by lesson and assembling the file folders so that it will be easy to hit the ground running.  Lindsey worked on getting the unit cover pages colored and in place.  We then slowly started working our way into the first lessons.    The content information in the text book is covered well and it's easy to find the required information and answers, and again their is an answer section in the back of the download if you are ever unsure of what is being asked.

The grade range listed for this product is 2-7, even though the text book is for grades K-6.  My personal opinion, and that of my 7th grader is that it would work best for the lower age range, as it tends to be a bit on the younger side with both the graphics and the amount of work required. However, if you incorporate the additional reading and the book reports, I'm sure you could easily bring it up to grade level.   It's still a wonderful learning tool that I highly recommend, just not for you typical 7th grade students.

To read other reviews of this and other vendor products, click here.

The Book of Trees (Review)

There aren't a great deal of curriculum products geared toward botany, so I was thrilled to have the opportunity to review The Book of Trees from Memoria Press.  I received a copy of the reader, student book and teacher guide for this review.   This set is specifically geared towards grades 6-8.   The vendor recommends (and references) The Tree Book For Kids and Their Grown-ups, and the Peterson First Guide to Trees of North America to accompany this class and sells it with the curriculum package.  However, you can easily use the internet to research what you need to know if you prefer to take that route.   These two items were not included with my review package, so I went the internet route.

The reader contains 82 pages, broken into 9 chapters of information.   The last two chapters are considered "advanced work" and cover photosynthesis and respiration.    Black and white graphics and photos are spaced throughout the book as well.    Both the teachers guide and student book follow the same chapter/topic layout and offer a total of 21 lessons.  The teacher's guide is basically an answer key with complete copies of the student book with answers already filled in.   There is also a goals page and model lesson plan page in the teachers guide.

In addition to worksheets, quizzes and final exams, the workbooks/teacher guides also contains 15 tree observation reports.   The teacher guide has these filled out to show you how they should look when completed.   This gives a nice opportunity to get outside and do some nature study.  One thing that I don't like is that there are not blank quizzes in the student workbook.   The quizzes must be copied out of the teacher guide, and for those of us who don't have access to a copier without a trip to a copy center, this is a hindrance.

I decided to have Lindsey work through one lesson per week, and also complete one tree observation per week.  However a student could easily complete one lesson per day.  Each lesson in the workbook is only two pages, typically one page is reading and questions, the second page is diagramming and activity suggestions.  Activities range from lesson to lesson, such as collecting leaves, dissecting a flower, and a leaf pigment experiment, to name a few.  Lindsey and I both like the straightforward style of writing, and the graphics are easy to understand and label.    The tree observation sheets have space for her to doodle what the trees and or leaves look like and that gives her a nice little artistic break in the middle of the science work.

We've both really enjoyed this product.  It's thorough but not overwhelming or tedious, and like I said, it allows for some creativity in the tree observation sections.   Those of you who live in more urban areas may need to look a little harder to find 15 varieties of trees for the tree observation section, but you can always google if you don't have a park nearby.   The layout of the program and the  ease of teaching the course also lends itself easily to a co-op setting.

For more Crew reviews of this product, click here.