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Gardening in March: Lettuce and Worms

Yesterday we planted red leaf lettuce in one of the deck containers.  Caya was very excited and quickly delved into helping dig holes and filling them back in.  Kili, wanted to be involved, but mostly just stuck her hands in the dirt and tried to eat as much as possible.  After finishing with the lettuce Caya said we should look for worms, so look for worms we did!  We found many worms, larvae, and grubs in our backyard rain garden under the leaf litter.  Caya didn't want to touch the "wiggly worms", but she was really interested in digging through the leaves and dirt to find them.  Last night as I was tucking her into bed she had so many questions about the worms and bugs: "Why did they curl up when we touched them?", "What do they do?", "What do they eat?", "What eats them?"  This led to a really great, 3-yr old level, ecological conversation about food webs and healthy soil.  Day-1 was a gardening success!

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  1. Great idea. Can you comment on how to keep dirt out of Kili's mouth while you garden?

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