Home Gardening-Children & Vegetable Gardens

Gardening can be an opportunity for a family to grow together through activities that all can enjoy. With children, learning to care for a garden can be not only an educational activity, but it can also help them develop a sense of appreciation for nature and our connection with the world around us. As spring approaches, we all have the chance to bring new wonders to our children and grandchildren with a simple home garden made from the scraps we have around the yard, a bit of soil, a few seeds or store plants, loving care and water. So why don’t you consider dragging those younger versions of ourselves from the television and begin the journey into home gardening with children.

What you will need

Old children’s pool (not the blow up kind)

Drill w/bits

Soil

Seeds / plants

Water bucket

Shovel

Trowel

The first step to your own home garden is to empty out that old hard plastic kiddie pool and punch a few holes into it with your drill and bits. Generally, it is best to drill your holes at 3-4 inch intervals around the edges of the pool about two inches from the bottom. Try and keep your holes at the same level around the pool. If you fail to do so, you may end up holding extra water that you really don’t need. Additionally, punching half a dozen holes in the bottom will help with drainage during those summer showers. If you don’t have an extra old kiddie pool around the house, you can use just about anything that will give you 6-12 inches in height and 2-3 square feet in planting area. Such possibilities would include, old tires, small buckets, and an old cooler without the lid. All that matters is you have a contained planting area that the child will understand as their garden area, so use your imagination.

Soil is probably the most important component for this project, for with out soil, there is really any point to starting a garden. So when considering what soil to use, remember you have several options.

Buy it-in many cases you can buy a couple of specialty soils that have built in fertilizers and moisture retention modules, but this can quickly become expensive if you are not careful.

Make it-for those who really want to educate, making your own soil can be a great opportunity. When making you own soil, you will need to mix equal parts of the following items, topsoil, sand, compost. The top soil you can dig out of your backyard, sand can come from the local playground or beach, but ask first and compost is just a matter of saving you grass clippings from the previous year and mixing it often until it decomposes.

Dig it- is probably the cheapest option of the three. Just find a good spot in your yard that needs a hole and start digging. The downside to using your own soil is you will have a hole and if you have bad soil, you will most likely have a poor garden.

No matter what option you use, fill your container until you are about 2-3 inches from the top. Don’t pack the dirt, as it will make it harder for the plants to grow.

Location is always an important part of home gardening. Too much sun and you plants will burn and too little and not much will grow. In our case, we planted a garden behind some trees with only midday and later sun, which gave us nice plants, but not much in vegetables. So pick a spot with good morning sun and cover from the afternoon winds.

Lastly, you will need to pick the proper vegetables to plant in your home garden. Picking such plants such as carrots, broccoli or melons would not be a good idea and in many cases if the plant doesn’t produce well, it will discourage your children from wanting to garden. Some of the easier types of vegetables to grow would be tomatoes, cucumbers, radishes or even pole beans. They will grow fast; produce well and generally a tasty to eat.

Note: remember to water your plants well and often using your watering bucket as any plant in a container will tend to dry out faster than those in the ground.

Enjoy!