EXCLUSIVE: Tanya McQueen's Springtime Tip!

We sprung our clocks ahead this past weekend for Daylight Savings and now it’s time to REALLY get ready for springtime!!
Luckily, we have Lifetime’s The Picker Sisters and ABC├óΓé¼Γäós Extreme Home Makeover: Home Edition‘s lifestyle expert Tanya McQueen to help us out with our spring planting! What better way to bring in the change of season than with a beautiful garden of flowers?!
Tanya says:

January seems like a crazy time to be out in the yard. The last thing on anyone’s mind during the cold and wet months is planting flowers. But, if you will just trust me, you will be smiling with satisfaction come March and April. Every year, my mom would fill our outdoor refrigerator with her planting bulbs. The bags had crazy labels like Hyacinth, Amaryllis and Alstroemeria. She would wait until after the holidays, and together we would plant a dozen or so containers with bulbs. When I was younger, it was like a science experiment.
I would wait and watch, wait and watch….it felt like years before I could see the payoff. But, when that first inch of green popped out, I felt like I had pulled off a magical feat. I still plant bulbs and I still feel like it’s magic. Like my mother, I have my kids help. It’s the kind of project that just can’t go wrong. There is little to no mess and it will keep the kids amused until each bulb has peaked through the soil.
First, collect any size container. Obviously, the size determines the amount of bulbs you can plant. I always buy a straight forward potting mix. So many nurseries try to sell a million different varieties of soil, but at the end of the day, for the novice gardener, potting soil is potting soil. Take the kids along to the nursery and let them pick out their bulbs. It’s hard to look at that gnarly hunk of root and imagine it as a beautiful blossom. Once home, fill your containers half full of soil and begin placing your bulbs inside. Just nestle them in the dirt with the pointed tip up. They say not to crowd the bulbs, but I’m greedy and have been know to go for overkill.
I love to layer different bulbs, by dividing them with a layer of soil. The truth about planting bulbs in containers, is it’s pretty hard to mess up. Mother Nature does a lot of the work for you.
It’s so important to not only take our kids to the Farmers Market for earthly delights, but try and produce some with them too. We live a rushed life, surrounded by cement and people, often forgetting how connected we are to the earth. It’s the simple things that remind us and our children how incredible it is to watch nature do its thing right in front of our very own eyes.

LOVE!
Start a tradition with your children and teach them how to nurture Mother Nature by growing their own garden!