One of the most fulfilling activities I have done with my children is to plant a garden with them. What a great lesson on reaping what you sow! Planting and raising a garden can teach your brood planning skills, responsibility, along with a good dose of patience.
Plan upfront to involve your kids in all steps, just shorten the time span of each step. A kid garden should be partially made by the kid. Though children’s attention spans are shorter, they’ll get the most out of the project if you start a kids’ garden from beginning to end letting them contribute to every step of the way. So plan to shorten the time some of the steps take, and avoid letting them off the hook for any of the steps in an effort to speed things along. As well, don’t spoil the kids by giving them only the fun parts while you do the weeding, and conversely, don’t do the fun parts yourself such as choosing what to plant and harvesting the first ripe cherry tomato, and make kids do the weeding.
Plant in wide-row, raised beds, and make them small. For each individual kid garden, postage stamp-sized plot works the best, with as little as six square feet for the younger ones to 100 square feet for older kids. Wide raised beds almost eliminate weeding and allow you to construct a garden in a day with kids’ help and no tilling. Typical raised beds are four feet wide, but go to three feet wide for the youngest kids.
Choose and plant kid-friendly garden plants. Start a kids’ garden planting day by presenting a variety of garden crops that are both fun to eat, feel, sniff, or otherwise have high interest, and where the majority have a relatively short time until harvest. This makes an ordinary garden truly a kid garden. Try for a mix of vegetables they can actually eat, herbs with great scents, and flowers that sprout and blossom quickly. As well, when possible, combine planting seeds right in the ground, starting plants early in a window sill, and getting finished starts from a nursery. For schools or community gardens, a truckload of garden starts for choosing can be brought in, for families, you can visit the nursery together. Favorite kid vegetables are red, orange and yellow cherry tomatoes which ripen sooner than larger tomatoes, baby round carrots, Easter egg radishes, sugar snap peas and lemon cucumbers. Favorite flowers are marigolds that can often be purchased already blooming in nurseries, quick and beautiful nasturtiums with large seeds great for planting right in the ground, giant sunflowers which grow fast and provide food for birds and people, and quick growing multi-colored bachelors’ buttons. Great herbs include the spaghetti herbs (basil, oregano), lemon balm, and chocolate mint, which really has a hint of chocolate aroma.
What are some of your favorite things to grow with your children?