#41. Teaching Kids to Grow Vegetables
Growing your own vegetables is a great way to eat nutritious, healthy vegetables. If you have kids, having your own vegetable garden is a great way to start a family project, and spend quality time with your children. When kids get involved in the gardening process they are going to be thrilled to eat what their little hands have nurtured. Now that alone is worth having a vegetable garden for!
The first step in this great family garden project is to allocate a plot if you have the garden space, a planter if there is no garden space for the vegetable garden, or a window box if you live in an apartment. Let the children select what they want to grow. You can make suggestions based on what you can afford to grow and the area you live in.
Take your children on a little field trip to the garden center or nursery, once each one has decided what they want to grow. They can select their vegetable seeds or seedlings, depending on which route they want to go. Advise them to start with the easier vegetables first to get some experience. Lettuce, peas or beans make a good vegetable starter for a kid's vegetable garden.
The children have to be involved in the entire process beginning with the soil preparation. You will need to buy age appropriate garden tools for your little ones. There are some real fancy ones in fun styles and colors specially targeted at kids.
Using the tools, guide the child to break up the soil, turning it up well, spreading the compost and mixing everything together. The next step is to spread out the soil evenly. For smaller kids the whole thing can get a bit overwhelming. If it is, step in with some lemonade for your hard working child and talk them through the next step.
Show them how much fun it can be to fill up a pot, put in the seeds and gently water, so as not to disturb the newly planted seeds. Rig up a tomato cage or trellis for the beans together with the kids.
How much advice and assistance you provide will depend on the ages of your children. Too much assistance and a child will get bored, too little and they could get scared of how much there is to do. It is up to the parent to make growing vegetables as fun as possible.
You will need to have a show and tell session with the kids first. Demonstrate what needs to be done either by planting something in a container or in the garden.