Jammie, My purple podded beans have produced sporadically in little waves. Beans are affected by the extreme heat too, just like tomatoes. I tried extra hard to get my bush beans in the ground on time this past spring (I tend to focus too much on tomatoes and then everything else gets planted only after the tomatoes are in) and it paid off. I think last year I planted them a touch too late and it got hot before they produced too much. Then the grasshoppers showed up and ate them down to the ground. For your girls, you need to plant Tanya's Pink Pod Bush Beans. The pods actually do turn pink, and the beans are tasty as well as pretty. (When you cook them, they do turn green just like the purple ones do.) Last year and this year, Tanya's Pink Pod have produced better in the heat than any other bush bean. You know, for the girls, y'all could put in a pink bed or a purple bed. Think of all the veggies that come in those colors: eggplant comes in both pinkish-violet and purple, there's pink tomatoes (including a pink bite-sized one called Sweet Treats) and purple tomatoes, pink podded bush beans, purple podded bush beans, purple podded pole beans, purplehull pinkeye southern peas, purple carrots, purple broccoli, purple cauliflower. I bet there's more pinks, but now that I'm trying to think of one, I can't. Oh, I am pretty sure there's pink popcorn and there is a pink kale, but it is ornamental and not edible. There's a pink swiss chard and, of course, pink-fleshed watermelons. I think y'all could have a whole bed or row of pink or purple plants or plants that produce either pink or purple foliage, flowers, fruit or veggies. Another fun thing with kids is to dye easter eggs using plants for natural dyes. For a couple of years I planted a "rainbow garden" in my veggie bed, where every raised bed was one color, and I had a bed in every color of the rainbow, in the same order as the colors in the rainbow. It was a lot of fun, even though it was quite a challenge to find fine some things in some colors. Every bed had a mix of veggies, herbs and flowers in that bed's designated color. Another fun thing we did when our son and nieces and nephews were younger was to plant them sunflower houses and also big teepees covered in a mix of pole beans, ornamental gourds and mini pumpkins. The kids could play in the sunflower house or teepees like they were playhouses or forts. For a sunflower house, you plant your sunflowers in a square box shape so the flowers form the 4 walls. After your 'walls' are 3 or 4' tall, you plant morning glories or black-eyed-susan vines or any other annual vine to climb the sunflowers' stalks. By the time the sunflowers are 5 or 6' tall, you can run twine back and forth from sunflower to sunflower like roof rafters, and then your vines creep along the twine and form a room over the house. It is the cutest thing. Just be sure to leave a 'doorway' area so the kids can go in and out. Gardening with kids is tons of fun! I grew up in a gardening family, so always have been a gardener. When I went to college, I majored in business....and even laughed about the fact that our local community college had a horticulture program. I remember joking about "who would want to major in horticulture?". lol To me, horticulture was just something "everyone" did, and I couldn't imagine anyone would want to make a living at it. I shake my head now and imagine that studying horticulture would have been right up my alley. Dawn Here is a link that might be useful: Tanya's Pink Pod Bean at SESE

diclemeg, Wait for the soil to thaw before pulling the plants or turning the soil. I wouldn't say that you really need to "till" the soil in the box, but giving it a few flips with a shovel, while you work in some new compost should be plenty. On the previous topic, some things to consider: You are on the verge of a four season garden. If I were in your shoes, I would check out the Four Season Harvest by Eliot Coleman, Winter Harvest Handbook by Eliot Coleman and the 12 month gardener by Jeff Ashton. A lot of the varieties that you mentioned would rebound fairly well from a light frost. What they really need is protection from the wind. Snow is not a big problem (it's actually an excellent insulator, and will protect the plants from much lower temps). If you had harvested them during the winter whenever the ground was thawed, you could have enjoyed some very tasty veggies. (Heck, you still might be able to eat them, if you pull them as soon as you thaw out - referring specifically to the radicchio, dandelion, and escarole. You might have to peel off the outer parts of the radicchio, but the center might still be good.) Don't just take my word for it though, check out those books from your local library. The key idea is that while the growing season stops in the winter (too little sunlight), the harvest season can continue all winter long (with the proper steps). Coleman lives in Maine, and is able to have fresh greens all winter long, with some very easy to make protections, and easy to follow instructions. Personally, I got all this information too late to be of any good to me this year, but I can't wait to give it all a try this fall/winter. In your case, you have some plants that might actually be able to rebound sufficiently to be harvestable. (Don't pull them while they are frozen. They can rebound if they are still in the ground. They won't grow like you want, as their primary goal now will be seed making, but if you can pull them before they start to grow again, they should be quite tasty (many of the starches will convert to sugars when exposed to freezing temps in root crops).

I have two girls: 2 and 4-1/2. My 4yo has been helping me in the garden since she was 1 year or so...I planted a cherry tomato bush for her and she loved loved to pick them and eat them one after another. She always liked to hold the hose. By the time she was two she had learned to dig for worms, and we talked a lot about being gentle with them, holding them only for a minute, and then putting them back into the ground and covering them with dirt. She likes to help dig, sprinkle seeds, use the hose, and this year we started two worm bins. Both kids really enjoyed shredding/dipping/wringing/fluffing the newspaper and gathering leaves to make a home for the worms. The double-watering-can idea is a great one - we have lots of scuffles over the hose, and the older one likes to water the younger one with it, which rarely ends well. Tomorrow we're getting watering cans! Last year I planted a sunflower house with all greystripe sunflowers. It produced over a hundred awesome flowers, but I wish I had planted them closer together (more than 1 per foot) because the leaves never got close enough to make thick walls. So this year I went crazy with seed catalogs and bought 10+ varieties of sunflowers in all colors, sizes, heights, etc. There's one called "American Giant" which is supposed to be 16+ feet tall. I'm going to try to make a better house, and they can help me dig and sprinkle. My 2yo now demands that we dig for worms whenever we set food in the back yard, and if she finds one, the other one comes running. If she finds a slug, she picks it up and says, "Nasty slug get me!" (trans. "Nasty slug tried to get me." Today she found a small rock and thought it was a slug. When I told her it was a rock, she said, "Dirty rock get me!" Two years ago we planted strawberries given to us by a friend with a surplus of plants, so we've talked about how flowers turn to fruit, and how the bees and such do their part. In the summer the girls beg to go and check for strawberries and raspberries every day. These have never made it back to the house. :-) The thing I struggle with the most is when they spill something valuable - like when the two year old poured the bucket of organic fertilizer I had mixed into the grass. And last year when I had my back turned for a few minutes turning soil over, they opened every package of beans (probably about 2+ cups total) and mixed them into their tiny bucket with dirt. 0_o So we just sprinkled them all over and had a mixed bean jungle later that year. I constantly remind them to please not step onto the dirt that I have just planted things in (esp. the potato bed!!) and of course they do so I just try to remind myself that kids who love being outdoors and learn that gardening is fun are more important that a reduced potato yield. (Duh!) They love looking at seed racks, and so I usually let my 4yo pick out a package of flower seeds. There's an old cement double-basin sink in our backyard that we filled with dirt and last year she put in anemones and nasturtiums. This year she picked out sweet peas. We got a flower-seed catalog, so just for kicks and giggles I gave them a packet of sticky notes and they used up the whole package marking what they would like to plant in the garden. Most days they end up completely soaked and/or muddy, and I've learned to send them out barefoot. As of right now there are no fewer than 7 pairs of shoes drying on the back porch. We're still working on helping me weed, since they can't (yet) tell the difference between a weed and a plant that we want to keep. They do have their own buckets and shovels, but even today they eschewed those for the "real" tools. My 2yo grabbed the 6-ft shovel and my 4yo grabbed the rake and they went to town on the newly planted bed of kale and chard. I've discovered that unless the sprinkler is on, they usually just want to do what I'm doing, and the hardest part is keeping up with them (i.e. digging a hole fast enough for the seeds they're dropping). Gardening with kids is an adventure for me and them!

smdane05 - Sounds really good! I've definitely found gardening to be relaxing and interesting. It's work too, but even that's rewarding. I wish I would have started a long time ago. I hope you do well with tomatoes. I'm not sure when would be a good time to start those, as they seem to like warmth. I'll probably start back with them in April or so. I did get a lot of experience with them last summer. I got some good ones, but also had several battles, which I can go into more detail later, if you'd like. As for preserving, I've only dabbled in veggies, and preferring a quick harvest. Maybe this year I can get into fruits. I've read conflicting information that blueberries are either hard or easy to grow. They're so healthy for a person though that it does makes sense to try and grow them. I'd imagine that they would need more sunlight than veggies. Books and reference materials do sound like a great way to go, along with these great online forums. I have a Rodale's Illustrated Guide to Organic Farming (think that's the title) with great information, and an herb book. I too have thought about catching the rainwater, though this past year was certainly not a great one for that. The tricky part around here is making sure the mosquitoes don't get into the water. You know, they'd breed terribly. I haven't seen a water catchment system yet that gets around that, though I have an idea/design to try that might work. I wonder though about using aquarium water. Doesn't it have algae and bacteria, and/or clorine in it? None of those could be good for a healthy garden. Seems risky to me. It's important to strive for good materials in everything you use. I recommend going organic as much as possible, and watch for recycled items with a possible checkered past or connection (even through Wal Mart and Home Depot).