Kids in the Garden

Share a passion for gardening with your kids while teaching them responsibility and patience. Here are some ideas to get you started.

Clever Containers

Small spaces aren’t an obstacle for small-fry gardens. Most flowers and vegetables are happy in containers as long as there’s a drainage hole and enough room for the roots to breathe. Almost anything can be a container. You can even use large jar (think Costco size), or beach buckets. A space-saving pot holder becomes living art when it’s mounted on a wall. If your kids are curious in the growing process, try the Root-Vue Farm which allows you to plant root veggies and watch the roots develop underground.

A Bed of Their Own

Help children pick a place that’s all theirs. Keep it kid-sized so the garden doesn’t get overwhelming. Set them up for success — make sure it’s a sunny, well-drained spot that’s in easy reach for watering. Let the gardeners-in-training mark their plot with a low decorative border they can paint themselves. Get them some cool garden tools they can call their own, or a personalized apron like this sunflower one on Etsy.

Kid-Friendly Crops

Kids won’t get discouraged with proven winners like bright and pretty marigolds, zinnias, nasturtiums, and poppies, or fast-growing veggies like radishes, lettuce, and carrots. Radishes, for example, are ready to harvest in only 25 days. Other plants that germinate quickly are sunflowers, daisies and cucumbers. Children just might add more healthy foods to their diet if they’ve grown them themselves.

Happy Hideouts

Sunflower houses provide great getaways — especially on hot summer days. And with some help from Mom or Dad, they’re easy to make. Start with a 4-foot by 8-foot rectangle in freshly prepared soil. Plant sunflower seeds — towering varieties like Russian Mammoth — every 12 inches along the rectangle, leaving a two-foot opening for the door. Place morning glory seeds next to each sunflower seed. (Eventually, they’ll twine around the stalk and grow taller than the sunflowers.) Then loosely tie lengths of twine just below the heads of the tallest sturdiest sunflowers on opposite sides of the rectangle.

Throw a Harvest Party

A garden is a great way to teach kids where food comes from. Harvest basil and throw a pesto-making party. Or help them whip up spaghetti sauce, tomato-basil soup, or ratatouille lasagna from the tomatoes, peppers, and eggplants they grew. Have them grow herbs, then dry them in oven. They’re perfect for sprinkling on pizza and you can help them throw a pizza party with their own herbs and sauce. Introduce theme garden mixtures like pizzas (tomato, oregano, basil and bell pepper plants), tacos (cilantro, jalapeño, lettuce and tomato) and salads (lettuce, carrot, cucumber and tomato).