Why you should grow a garden with your kids!

Currently, I have a seven year-old daughter and five year-old son. They love most fruits and vegetables, which sometimes surprises other parents.

In most cases, kids take to a handful of fruits with ease, but vegetables of any sort can prove challenging.

I avoided this situation, for the most part, by planting a garden and my children helped with this family project from the beginning.

When my kids were five and three respectively, we started a family garden in the backyard.

Of course, my son couldn’t do that much because he was so young. I’d carry him and let him plant seeds in our little garden area, though. My daughter took care of watering the plants. However, I handled more complicated garden maintenance.

I attempted to let the kids handle most of the work as time went on and sat back in more of a mentoring role.

Two years of gardening: Looking at the results

Gardening helped my kids and I bond together for at least an hour each day.

I was able to teach my children how to grow their own food. At some point, I managed to show them how important vegetables and fruits are for their bodies.

My two children learned how to be patient and wait for their labour to turn into edible foods. Our garden even taught them how to solve (gardening) problems and take a delicate approach to things. Also, the whole endeavor made our family closer than ever.

My advice for other parents

In my opinion, the benefits of gardening with your children speak for themselves.

You shouldn’t jump into this endeavor without some planning, though. It’s important to make everything fun for the children.

Therefore, you should let your children handle most of the work. Feel free to join your kids, but make the garden about them and what they want to do with it. Don’t hesitate to let them pick the fruits or vegetables and be sure to educate them along the way.

Children are just like us, they don’t like failing. As a parent, you should help make sure the garden succeeds. If your children miss on some garden maintenance, then you’ll want to take care of it.

Then again, a failed garden can serve as a valuable lesson to show children that failure doesn’t mean the end of the world. Always give your children a taste of the end product by encouraging them to eat the fruits or vegetables they’ve grown with their own hands!

A family tradition I intend to maintain

Our family has spent over two years with our backyard garden. For now, I don’t plan on stopping this tradition, and I doubt I’ll put an end to the garden.

My children love gardening after school each day and they still love their fruits and vegetables.

The original plan was to maintain a small garden to save money. From there, it turned into a family bonding experience that we cherish. It’s rare that one of us misses our daily time tending to our plots.

I recommend that all parents build a garden with their children because I can’t think of anything that’s more rewarding.

Image courtesy of Shutterstock.com

45 Comments

- - silvialee said
  - 13 May 2015
    1:25 pm
love this idea! Just hope i will be able to maintain it haha.

- - mom113055 said
  - 12 May 2015
    4:00 pm
it s great

- - mom135828 said
  - 11 May 2015
    12:24 pm
Best intentions to do this with my kids but going back to work part time meant it all fell by the wayside a bit. Need to get back into the garden and do some weeding so we can plant some more seeds.
- june11 replied
  
  29 Jan 2016 , 4:25 pm
  Unless your little ones know the difference between weeds and what you are trying to grow, if they start weeding on their own you may very well have no garden. Been down that track. Their Dad didn’t have any idea either.
- - Erahh said
  - 05 May 2015
    1:36 pm
My kids and i have a strawberry patch and their favorite part of going outside is checking for new strawberries and eating something they have grown themselves. its a great early biology lesson about plant life and how they survive.

- - Kasey said
  - 04 May 2015
    2:38 pm
I love having veges in the garden we’ve done corn, capsicum, carrots, brocolli, bok choy, celery and strawberries.

- - mom74959 said
  - 30 Apr 2015
    4:00 pm
I loved raiding dad’s veggie garden for peas and radishes as a kid, lol.

- - mom60450 said
  - 28 Apr 2015
    10:00 pm
Gardening with your children is a habit they carry with them throughout their life. My children gardened with me when young and now as adults share the same love of gardening with their children.

- - mom107723 said
  - 27 Apr 2015
    7:05 pm
This is great outdoor interaction and when you harvest your goodies, when taken indoors makes greater interaction cooking them for dinner.

- - Mum of 5 darlings :) said
  - 27 Apr 2015
    11:40 am
I always get my children involved in gardening with me. They have their vegie gardens to look after. Teaching them to grow their own vegies is a great way to get them to realise where the vegetables at the supermarket come from.

- - zeelah said
  - 25 Apr 2015
    4:23 pm
It’s great for children to not only have a connection to their world but also their food. Thank you.

- - eachpeachunique said
  - 24 Apr 2015
    10:14 pm
Getting our children interested in gardening is a wonderful thing. Especially now when the earth is struggling to produce enough food to feed the masses. Learning to grow your own produce is an invaluable skill to pass on 🙂

- - smiles said
  - 21 Apr 2015
    8:47 pm
We have a veggie patch and we find it encourages the kids to try and taste new things.

- - dannsbuild said
  - 21 Apr 2015
    8:24 pm
I will have to start a veggie patch soon. The kids are funny they love a veggie patch so much. Mind you the strawberries always disappear.

- - nadine_hill said
  - 13 Apr 2015
    8:20 pm
Definitely a rewarding project – children can learn so much from gardening and, indeed, nature itself!

- - ralu said
  - 12 Apr 2015
    9:59 pm
Great article.We have only a veggie patch ,so we rotate different veggies all year around.Even the little one noticed our veggies taste much better than the ones from supermarket.

- - Cynthea Jenke said
  - 12 Apr 2015
    9:15 pm
Well i love working in the garden with my grandchildren. Teaching them gardening skills so they can help grow vegetables gives them quality time to get out in the dirt and enjoy the weather. Weve just completed planting our root veges before winter sets in. I always start them off with growing something easy like peas. Once grown we collect the peas and the kids eat them fresh out of the bowl. Now 4. He still does it.

- - mom57522 said
  - 11 Apr 2015
    10:56 pm
We garden together as a family and I also volunteer at our school veggie patch.

- - mom56312 said
  - 11 Apr 2015
    8:09 pm
My kids just love watering our garden, they also like to run outside in the morning and pick fresh apples or peaches and strawberries off the bushes fo ther brain food treats while at school.

- - nictate said
  - 11 Apr 2015
    4:37 pm
I plan on doing this with my daughter. Will be starting very soon and she is only 2 but loves to water and pull out weeds with me
- mom93821 replied
  
  12 Apr 2015 , 6:32 am
  Kids love their own special little patch in the garden too! They love watching their plants grow! 🙂
- - mom57808 said
  - 11 Apr 2015
    9:17 am
I do this now and then we cook or make something with whatever we have brought inside and the kids will eat up everything they make