Plant a PizzaGarden with your kids. It looks like a pizza and you can use what you grow in the garden to make a pizza. Kids will love this activity and it will get them introduced to gardening. It doesn’t take a great deal of space and maybe the kids will stop tracking through your vegetable garden once they know how much work goes into it.
Steps to Making a PizzaGarden
Mark off the area in which you are going to plant it. Take a stake and put it in the ground where the middle of your garden is going to grow. Attach a 3-1/2 length of string to the stake. Keep the string taunt and mark spots going around in a circle until your marks make a perfect circle. You can use spray paint or landscapers spray paint to mark the circle on the grass or ground. If there is grass there it must be dug out and discarded. With a shovel dig all around the edge of the circle, then turn over all the dirt within the circle. If you have a small tiller you can use it, just stay within the circle.
Once your area is dug up you may want to add a little cow manure and peat moss and if you ground is hard and rocky or has a great deal of clay in it, you might want to add a little bit of top soil. Dig this in to the circle or use your tiller. The soil should not be chunky but fine when you are done. (Go rent a tiller for this project; it will cut down time and effort). Divide your circle in to 6 wedges. You can divide your wedges by placing stones down or by laying straight sticks down or just put your stake back in the middle and put 6 stakes on the outside edges and string garden twine from one to another.
Planting the Wedges
Plant 3 oregano plants in the first wedge. Oregano is a Mediterranean herb that is in most Italian dishes and it smells really good. You can use it in spaghetti sauce and soups and stews as well. Oregano is a perennial herb and will come back the next year.
Grow parsley in the second wedge. Be sure to get Italian flat parsley since it has more flavor than the curly variety. Plant about 3 plants in this wedge. Parsley is a biennial herb. If you leave it alone it will reseed and come back next year. You can dry both oregano and parsley by hanging sprigs to dry in a dark dry area. Once dry you can strip the leaves from the stems and store in an airtight container.
Plant 3 basil plants in the third wedge. Basil is another Mediterranean Herb that has a very strong flavor and scent. There are lots of varieties of basil but sweet basil works best. Basil is an annual herb so it will not come back the next year. Don’t try to dry basil by air drying as it will turn black. You can dry it by placing it between sheets of paper towel and putting leaves only in the microwave. Microwave 1 minute on high then check. Microwave in 10 second intervals until the leaves feel dry. Store in airtight containers. You can use all of these herbs fresh as well.
Plant onion sets in the fourth wedge. Onion sets look like small onions and you can get them in red, white or yellow. Yellow onions are probably the best for pizza. Plant up to 30 onion sets in this wedge. They will pop up and you can pull them young for green onions or let them go for awhile to make bulb onions.
Plant 3 pepper plants in the fifth wedge. You can chose from green bell pepper or banana peppers or a combination of both. It won’t take very long to start getting peppers to use on your pizza.
Plant 2 tomato plants in this wedge. Plant the tomatoes and immediately put a tomato cage around them so you won’t have to install them later and disturb the roots of the plant. The best type of tomato to grow for pizza is the Roma that has small oblong tomatoes suitable for sauce.
Your pizza garden will definitely get the attention of the neighborhood and will most definitely get your kids gardening.
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