Growing (Green Thumbs) Together: Gardening As a Family

As long as you keep gardening projects simple and rewarding, your kids will love gardening. The following tips will help you match projects to your children’s interests and abilities.

Planting and caring for a garden is a great way to introduce kids to nature, good nutrition and the responsibility of caring for a living thing. Whether or not your youngest children understand the connection between the tiny seeds and growing plants, they’ll enjoy placing seeds in the dirt, packing down the soil and giving seedlings a "drink."

As long as you keep the project simple and rewarding, your children will love gardening. The following tips will help you match crops to your children’s interests and abilities:

Start small. Window boxes or containers, because of their small size, can actually turn out to be rather luxurious gardens. Recycle clean bleach and milk containers. Cut off the tops and use them as planters.

Start some seeds indoors. Start tomato, eggplant and pepper seeds indoors in potting soil. Indoor seedlings need full sunlight or the stems will stretch toward the light and weaken the plant. To ensure proper drainage for your seedlings, use cardboard egg cartons or plastic containers with holes punched in the bottom. Place the containers in a pan of shallow water and let the plants absorb the water.

Get some child-sized tools from a local nursery or garden center. Try to find tools that look genuine, so the kids will feel like real gardeners. Or save your money and put old serving spoons and plastic sand shovels to work.

Leave an area where kids can dig, even after planting. This is often their favorite part of gardening.

Make a secret place in the garden for your kids. Leave a space between the stalks of easy-to-grow sunflowers or bean poles so they can crawl “inside.”

Make a chicken-wire animal and train ivy around it for instant topiary!

Choose colorful plants. Tomatoes, raspberries, blueberries and strawberries are good choices because they are bright and easy to locate and pick.

Try some fast-growing crops, such as radishes and beans, so children can see the results quickly.

Kids like extremes. Plant huge flowers, such as sunflowers, and small vegetable plants, such as cherry tomatoes.