As a mother of three children, I seem to either have way too much help in the garden, or none at all. Luckily for me, I was once a child who helped out in the garden, and my Grandaddy had lots of tricks up his sleeve when it came to gardening with me. It must have worked too, because he eventually managed to pass his love of gardening on to me. So, just for you I put together my 6 tips for gardening with children based to help you get your workforce excited to help!
1. Encourage the “help.” Let’s face it, sometimes our “help” makes things take twice as long as they would take if we did it ourselves. If all our children hear is things like “go away” or “you aren’t helping” they will quickly lose their enthusiasm for helping. It is our job to give them tasks that they can actually complete, so they will want to help us!
2. Buy child-sized tools. Having tools their size will really help your children be able to actually complete simple garden tasks. I will urge you however to avoid buying the super-cheap plastic tools that you find all over the stores in the spring. Many of them break too easily or are too flimsy to actually dig a hole. While it isn’t necessary to spend a fortune, cheap tools will quickly discourage both you and your helpers. Not to mention that you’ll be hitting the broken pieces with the lawnmower well into the next year. Um, maybe that’s just me. Nevermind.
3. Let your children help decide what to plant. Whether you are browsing the seed catalog or the garden shop, it is great fun for your children to be allowed to help you choose some things to plant in your garden. I will warn you, they will likely choose the craziest seeds they can find, but who knows, giant pumpkins might become your new favorite thing to plant!
4. Give them a space of their own. Children love to have a little corner of the garden to call their own. Within this space, they are welcome to dig, plant and destroy to their heart’s content! My girls love eating herbs and grape tomatoes, so those are great options. You know what else they want to plant there? How about that endless supply of apple seeds, orange seeds, peach pits and every other seed they find in their foods? Go ahead and let them plant them in their special space! What harm can it do to let them try? If your children are very small, how about just putting a sandbox in the garden area so they can dig while you do?
5. Safety first. In your garden kit, it is a great idea to have something for treating bites, stings and scratches without having to run back to the house. A few band-aids wouldn’t hurt either. I also go the extra mile and make sure there are no big ant hills or creepy crawlies, such as snakes in the garden area before we begin.
6. Use organics. You don’t want to risk exposing those sweet babies to nasty chemicals in synthetic pesticides, herbicides or fertilizers, right? I didn’t think so! You can read more about why we garden organically here.
If you enjoyed this post, you might also like my “Garden Fresh Gardening” Pinterest board. And don’t forget to sign up for Beulah’s moooooooosletter! You’ll get all the farm news from a cow’s point of view!
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These are all great tips! This year we created a ‘Kids Garden’ where my youngest two planted whatever they wanted. The 6 year old chose potatoes, peas, lettuce, spinach and cucumbers. The 12 year old chose peas and lettuce (3 different varieties). My 14 year old made his own sweet corn patch and incorporated black beans and butternut squash in there to see if he could get the Three Sisters thing going on.
I have begun doing daycare out of my home in order to make some extra cash, and this fall we will be building a daycare garden for those kids (so it will be ready in the spring). They will be able to plant and harvest some of the food they eat during the day. I think it will be great to teach them at an early age about seeds and plants, and it will be a lot of fun to get in there and let them get dirty.
I love that your children chose such healthy options! And the daycare garden is brilliant! Good job!!