Few things are more enjoyable in life than gardening, but when you involve your kids, the time is extra special. If you’re thinking of breaking ground to plant a few seeds this year, you’ll want the easy growing vegetables for kids and a good way to make it all happen. Here’s how to get it all started:
Why You Should Start A Vegetable Garden
Vegetable gardening is fun, especially when you involve the kids! Moreover, it’s a healthy, outdoor exercise that’s good for the entire family. It can relax you after a long, arduous day at work and it offers your children an intelligent place to feed their curiosity. Speaking of feeding, vegetable gardening is one of the best inexpensive ways to put organic food on your table!
Plant a few extra rows of any variety of veggies and you’ll have a spare crop at the end of the season to share with neighbors, a local food bank or for canning and making relishes and pickled what-nots. All good fun for the kids, while teaching them lessons in economics, community, and the culinary arts.
What You Need To Succeed
Based on what you decide to grow, pick a large enough spot in your yard that basks in the sun for a full 6 to 9 hours, as that’s how much most vegetables are going to need.
The sunlight also helps to increase the number of vegetables each plant will produce and keeps pesky bugs at a minimum. If you have a shadier garden, you can still grow vegetables, but you’ll need to select one of the varieties that are shade tolerant such as carrots, potatoes or spinach.
Make sure the garden spot isn’t in the way of baseball games or other backyard activities. If you have pets or backyard visitors such as squirrels or rabbits, you may also want to add fencing around the planned garden area.
If the soil in your yard isn’t nutrient-rich, add compost or garden soil from a local home goods store. Make sure it’s moist enough and free of rocks and other debris. After you till the soil, carefully section off individual planting areas and mark them with little posts, so you can track what’s going to grow.
For taller plants and those that climb, prepare sticks of wood for leaning and a means of securing the plants to them. Don’t forget to plant your tallest vegetables in the northernmost section of the garden, so they don’t block the sunlight of others.
Plan on watering your garden according to what you grow and the instructions on the seed packets. Most vegetables require regular watering, particularly when there isn’t much rain or you’re not close to a body of water (which tends to hydrate the surrounding soil).
Why Including Easy Growing Vegetables For Kids Is Important
The faster your garden grows, the more intense your kid’s involvement will be. Of course, it’s okay if you choose to plant items that will take longer to yield results. But when your children follow the progress and see little seedlings sprout up, you know they’re going to be excited.
You may want to start their veggie garden with a mixture of seeds and young plants. This way they are able to care for the seedlings while they are waiting for the seeds to sprout.
Come harvest time, they’ll be nagging you daily to go pick the vegetables. Keeping track of growth with a chart (an excellent exercise for young scientists) will be less of a chore and more of a field trip. You don’t want to discourage or bore your garden helpers, so including easy growing vegetables for kids is most often the best route.
The Easiest Vegetables To Start Out With
Because it’s easier to foster interest in the growing process if the vegetables you select are quick to show up and flourish even when minor mistakes are made, you want to choose the easy growing vegetables for kids to tend to and ones they’ll be more likely to eat. Anyone or a combination of the following 10 will be suitable for such purposes:
- Spinach
- Lettuce
- Broccoli
- Carrots
- Green Beans
- Peas
- Pumpkins
- Cherry Tomatoes
- Cucumbers
- Potatoes
You could choose from the list based on your kid’s favorites, the amount of space needed for growth, watering needs or canning purposes. However you go about selecting your star veggies, just be sure and have a plan for the garden itself and the work throughout the season. Consider assigning certain jobs and having your kids mark off on a chart when they’ve completed any task.
A vegetable garden is a fantastic way to spend time together as a family, and it yields a whole lot of nutritious yummies for enjoying meals together. Don’t put off creating a garden together for another year, get out there and start digging! Start with the list of easy growing vegetables for kids, add fun, sun, and water and you can’t go wrong.
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