Make Gardening a Family Affair - Part 2: Getting the Kids Involved

It isn’t always easy to get the kids to help around the house or work outside. Gardening can be a great way to change that. Let your entire family be involved from start to finish.

If you’re starting a garden from scratch, it’s a good idea to include your family members when picking a spot for the garden. This will help them feel needed in the garden and will get them excited at the thought of planting.

Make sure you involve the kids when you’re picking out most of the fruits and vegetables to grow. While you may choose something more useful, or a vegetable everyone in the family will eat, younger kids will enjoy a variety of plants. Some kids can have fun picking brightly colored fruits and vegetables.

Miniature bell peppers (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Bell peppers are great for small children because they’re some of the easiest vegetables to grow. Radishes are also very easy to grow and brightly colored. Snow peas are another great crop to garden with kids.

Both radishes and snow peas grow during the cool seasons. Kids tend to enjoy fruits more than vegetables, so strawberries, raspberries, and blueberries are great choices. Others may like getting fruits and vegetables that are more unique and that they aren’t used to seeing daily.

Also, you can look into miniature vegetables, like baby carrots and potatoes, baby cauliflower, and baby lettuce. These are perfect for little hands and they come in a variety of colors.

Baby vegetables are perfect for helping your child feel more confident when working in the garden because they’re easier. You don’t want to overwhelm him or her by starting with large fruits and vegetables that may be more difficult to care for.

Be careful that you don’t overwhelm your family if you’re someone who’s been gardening for awhile. Keep in mind that a medium-sized garden to you can seem huge to a child and a large garden can seem like it’s a daunting task to someone who isn’t used to it.

A good way to handle this is, if your children are very young, you can assign them each their own “spots” or “plants” in the garden. This way, you can look over them in the overall larger garden, but they’ll be learning how to water and care for a vegetable or fruit on their own, without feeling too overwhelmed.

As your children get older, you can expand their garden spaces so they’re growing more plants. You can also help to make sure as the space expands, that your children learn how to grow a wider variety of fruits and vegetables.

You can also broaden their cultural knowledge by planting fruits and vegetables that are used in different ethnic meals. You can introduce your family to several different vegetables when growing them.

Experimenting with different dishes is a great way to have some fun with your family. Your kids will enjoy picking out new dinners based on the foods that were grown in the garden!

Aside from picking out the seeds to plant, your family can help with the preparation. Kids especially like this part. Most kids love to help with getting the soil ready for planting. Digging is often a kid’s favorite part of working outside, but don’t limit him to just working in the dirt. Kids are very resourceful and will enjoy learning about and working in all parts of the garden.

Girl with Watering Can (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

If your children are very young, make sure to let them know they’re doing a great job whenever they’re working. It will help them feel more confident about what they’re doing.

Children can also help plant the seeds and water the fruits and vegetables as they grow. If your children are little, you can purchase tiny plastic watering cans so they’re able to water the plants along with you.

You can also keep a small corner of the garden for growing flowers along with the food items that your family chooses to use. Marigolds are great for gardens because they’re low maintenance and easy to care for.

Whatever flower you decide on, make sure it’s non-toxic if you’re gardening with small kids. When planting and caring for a garden, remember that while you know better, if you’re working with younger ones, they might not realize that they can’t put everything from the garden into their mouths. Some vegetable tops can make a child sick. So make sure they understand the importance of not eating out of the garden unless it’s an appropriate food item and has been washed first.

Engaging your kids in the process of growing a garden can be a great way to help them learn about the world and become more self-sufficient!

It's also a good way to keep your family involved with one another, and give everyone a sense of responsibility over their own area of the garden. We'll discuss this aspect more next week, so be sure to check back then for some more family-friendly gardening tips!