Our entire family loves to participate in gardening. OK, well we all like the idea of gardening, and we start with great gusto. Then it usually ends up being Matt's project late summer, and then finally ends with me cursing the carrots because it's so dirty and laborious to dig them all up and wash them.
That being said, I'm so grateful for our garden. It's not large since we live on a normal city lot, but we've learned to grow what we will actually eat (and what we've had good success with in the past).
The harvest our children most look forward to is popcorn!
It grows just like regular sweet corn, so once the stalks are brown in about mid October we pick all the ears. Then we hang it all up by the husks and wait for it to dry. This is about a three month process. -(gardening provides so many lessons in patience)-
This year, I used the ears to decorate in the fall time, then once it became Christmas season I hid them in the coat closet. I don't know if I'll do the same next year, as it became a common game to see who would find a popcorn kernel in their shoe!
In the past, we've removed the kernels at Christmas and eaten our popcorn during our family celebration.
This year we waited a little longer and instead took advantage of a snow day when Nathan and Matt were both home and blizzard conditions assured we were all staying in.
We popped some later and it turned out great!
We are also going to try to keep some of the kernels for planting in our garden this year. The only disadvantage with planting popcorn is that you could just buy a bag of popcorn kernels cheaper then what it cost to grow it yourself (because we bought starter plants). If we can keep and plant our own seeds, then it will make more sense...either way we'll probably keep planting it since the kids like it so much.
It's fun to enjoy some of the fruits of our garden in the middle of winter.
-Some people eat canned tomatoes or beans all winter. Our supplies are long gone (if there were any), but we got popcorn!
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