"Cats Eyes" loved his carrots!

Did you know that during World War II carrots were the making of a myth? 

That's right! Rumors escalated that British pilots were eating carrots to enable their night vision so they could spot enemy bombers. It was a cover story the government perpetuated to keep the Germans from finding out about their new radar system that actually was spotting the planes.

But as most myths/legends are based on some truth, there was a British pilot named,  John "Cat's Eyes" Cunningham, who was known to be a night fighting ace. His outstanding eyesight was attributed to his passion for eating carrots. Thus, people began growing carrots in their Victory Gardens!

What kid doesn't like carrots? At our house it is arguably the one vegetable that every child will eat in abundance. No surprise, my children wanted to grow their own carrots.

Organic Parisian Carrot - the round, sweet carrot

This year, we decided to try the globe shaped Parisian Carrots by Victory Seeds, which is excellent for container gardening or heavy soils. They are a little bigger than a radish and bright orange. They grow quickly and are very sweet and tasty. This is now my the favorite carrot of my kids.

Of course, knowing "where" our carrots are grown, we have the luxury of them being purely organic. We make our own compost, but we also add some of Dr. Earth's Organic 5 Fertilizer to our soil to make sure it remains healthy.

The carrots are packed with nutritional goodness. A serving of carrots has over 400% of our daily need for Vitamin A and a little bit of almost every other nutrient, except for Vitamin D.

Organic Parisian "round" Carrots - Victory Seed Company

Because the carrots are such a hit with the kids, this year we have began succession planting with carrots, something we have not tried before. I have a lot of herbs that I use succession planting to keep us consistently stocked, but this is our first attempt with carrots. Every 30 days, we plant more.

As for pests, thus far the only issue we have encountered is fungus gnats that seem to start up when I keep the soil moist for germination and when the roots are still too shallow. I have had less issue with it since we have been using companion planting, such as my border of our carrot patch is covered in chives, but that alone has not stopped it. We made a mixture of sand and diatomaceous earth and sprinkled the top of our soil with it and that seemed to work best.

Something else that works well, is the YELLOW fly sticky tapes. The problem is, I can barely find the bright yellow ones anymore, which is the color that attracts the flies/gnats. One can design their own by painting something bright yellow and then covering it in petroleum jelly and then wiping it clean as it gets dirty and reapplying. The downside is, I live in a hot state where petroleum jelly tends to melt.

Teaching kids about carrots - This is a resource packed full of education, recipes, and fun about carrots. Personally speaking, we never have enough to use in a recipe. The kids wipe them out within an hour of pulling them up.

Organic Gardening Education - Irrigation Canals in Ancient Mesopotamia

As many of you know, I not only have a passion for organic gardening, but I also enjoy using it as an opportunity to teach my children about history and science, while sharing life skills with them. Each year, my children pick out which veges or flowers they will not only plant, but also care for and harvest.

Thus, I have decided to do a series on organic gardening with kids, that will also cover science and history lessons you can implement in your garden or home schooling.

Organic Gardening Education Two thumbs up for successful irrigation

 When learning about how the ancient people of our earth used to get water to their plants, something so simple to us, became more of a challenge. The first lesson was from Ancient Mesopotamia and how they irrigated their first crops.

I try not to buy anything unless we cannot figure out a way to achieve a lesson without new resources. After a family event recently, we had several disposable, large aluminum roaster/serving pans on hand.  Snipping an end off each of them, carefully not to cut myself on the sharp edges, I then used binder clips to hold them together, as well as tape.

Organic Gardening Education with Kids - The process of forming irrigation canals.

One can line the inside of the pans with a large trash bag if desired to help hold in the soil and water. We did snip a small rectangle on one side and then on the other to act as a river entering and exiting the region. The goal was to figure out how to get that water when poured from our watering can, to go into various "farming" regions alongside the river, without washing all the soil away.

We also had quite a few "river rocks" from an old fish tank available for our use, as well as twigs from our neighborhood.

Organic Gardening Education with Children - Took a couple of tries to get the water to reach all the land.

I try to take photos of most of our "experiments" in history and science as a visual aid to add to their history and/or science binders. And it did not stop here. After this lesson, we were able to move onto various simple machines that made irrigating crops even easier as knowledge and experience increased. Such as how a lever made it easier to lift water over the banks.

My children now realize that turning on a hose and watering the garden is not such a chore compared to what their ancestors went through to grow crops. Learning about life through hands-on experience helps cultivate a greater appreciation of what we have and a desire to improve upon it for future generations.

* BONUS: Play the Geography Challenge of Being an Ancient Farmer for a year.