Creating a Fun Family Garden

Creating a fun family garden is a wonderful way to spend time together as a family outdoors, teach responsibility, and the perfect opportunity to talk about taking care of ourselves as well as our planet.This blog post includes links sponsored by EcoScraps and Wal-Mart.

I love to have a garden even though I am a “low maintenance” type of gardener and I wanted to try to include our children in a more individualized way. So when EcoScraps asked if I’d like to partner with them on some creative ways to use their product I jumped at the idea. EcoScraps is a company that makes plant food made from recycled food that would otherwise rot in a landfill. These products are specifically made to make our gardens healthier and our resourcefulness even better as we recycle unused food.

• In the United States, we waste 40% of the food produced. That is enough to fill the Rose Bowl every day. It sits in landfills producing methane, which is 20X more harmful than CO2.
• • Between 2011 and 2015, EcoScraps recycled 75 million lbs of food waste. They are matching that number in 2016 with projected recycling of another 75 million lbs of food waste–this time in just 12 months.

Awesome right!?

So we decided to give EcoScraps a try and picked some up at our local Walmart this gave us the perfect time to talk about the responsibility we have to take care of the earth with our kids. A few of the things we talked about were:

What it means to be self-sufficient.

What happens to food that is unused or uneaten in our own homes as well as restaurants, grocery stores, and theme parks.

Proper care of growing fruits/vegetables.

What they can do to help the earth be a little healthier as they help their garden grow.

That is when I had the idea to create their own little “garden plot” with their pictures. My kids always take better care of things when they take a personal ownership for something. We found these simple garden dividers at Lowes, they were $5 a piece and divided our little raised garden bed perfectly.

We then had them each pick out at least one plant they would be excited about growing/eating. Jackson wanted to plant strawberries and peas, Jayne wanted to plant watermelon and pumpkins, and Jett wanted to plant tomatoes and cucumbers. Just kidding, Jett had no idea so we picked it out for him! 🙂 I then created a laminated picture of them that they could use for their own little garden space. I used picmonkey to crop a picture of their heads and after laminating simply duct taped a paint stir stick to the back of the picture.

The kids thought this was pretty cool…

After placing their garden markers we talked about how they would each be responsible to make sure their plants had enough food and water and that they weren’t covered up by weeds competing for that water/sun.

It was a gorgeous night to plant a garden…

Each plant only requires a tablespoon of EcoScraps to be sufficiently covered so this small bag was plenty for what we needed.

There are a variety of EcoScraps products to choose from, you can check out the links below to find exactly what you are looking for. You can find these products

Compost, Garden Soil, Potting Mix, Herb and Vegetable Plant Food, All Purpose Plant Food, Compost Accelerator, Citrus and Avocado Plant Food, Starter Plant Food, Rose and Flower Plant Food, Fresh Start Plant Food, Fruit and Vegetable Plant Food, Compost Accelerator.

Products can be purchased online at www.walmart.com/ecoscraps.

Our individual efforts can change the course of our planet. Did you know recycling 15 million lbs of food waste is equivalent to keeping 500,000 cars off the road for an entire day? That is pretty incredible! I love that this product not only helps produce new food but it also helps our planet stay healthier longer.

I am excited to announce that we are giving away a $50 giftcard on instagram today! All you need to do is follow EcoScraps and MyMommyStyle on instagram and tell us what you like to plant in your garden in the comments! Giveaway will end May 31 2016. You must be a US resident, 18 years of age, and giveaway is in no way associated with instagram.

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