Tips for gardening with kids at home
There’s nothing better than picking your own fruit and veg and watching your flowers and plants spring up and become a haven for bees, birds and other creatures.
Gardening is great fun and good exercise and it’s fantastic when kids get out into the garden and watch with excitement as their plants grow.
Here’s some tips for getting kids into the garden:
❤️ Keep it simple and start small.
❤️ Set aside a patch of dirt for the kids. You really don’t need much room for a little starter garden, you can use a pot, find a small patch somewhere in the garden or even use a styrofoam box. Ask your local fruit & veg shop if they have any spare styrofoam boxes as they are great for growing herbs inside during Winter too.
❤️ To begin with, choose some hardy plants, veggies or fruit that don’t require bucket loads of love to survive! If you want to grow flowers, go for a stroll around your neighbourhood to see which plants are thriving in your area.
❤️ Even with love, water, food and mulch, sometimes plants die. It’s great for kids to learn to keep trying even if there are a few failures along the way. You may even be able to teach them how to figure out the cause of the problem and prevent it from happening again next time.
❤️ Don’t be too frustrated if kids veer off course and are suddenly playing with bugs, rocks or other things while you are left doing the planting. Chances are, that if you are outside, they will be keen to follow and watch what you are doing and ask to be involved.
❤️ Kids like to be creative. Provide them with some space to decorate their new garden or pot. The kids might want to paint some paddle pop sticks and create stick people for their garden, or decorate it with rocks, or gum nut people. Or you may even be able to create a fairy garden together.
❤️ Encourage the kids to check on their plants regularly, water them and feed them. It’s a great way to teach them responsibility.
❤️ When it’s time to harvest, get the kids involved. They can snip herbs or climb a tree to pick fruit and they will love sampling their fresh produce.
Hardy flowering plants to grow:
- Coreopsis | Grow from seed or seedling. These drought hardy plants have cheery yellow flowers. Simply deadhead the spent blooms regularly to encourage extra bloom and they will do the rest.
- Daisy | These are tough plants that benefit from a trim, they will simply spring back with more flowers. They are also easy to grow from cuttings.
- Lavender | Bees love lavender and there are so many varieties. They look great and smell great too. Kids can pick the flowers and put them near their pillow to help them go to sleep.
- Pansies | Grow from seed or seedlings in Autumn. You can also eat home-grown pansy flowers. They look beautiful on cakes!
- Salvia | There are so many types of Salvia but they are quite tough and will produce beautiful flowers. Birds and bees love Salvia plants, so you may find you attract more little visitors to your garden once you plant them.
- Sunflowers | So easy to grow and such happy flowers! Plant from seed in Spring.
- Roses | They are very hard to kill, they love the sun and a good hard prune, plus kids will love to smell them, pick them and either put them in a vase or give them away to someone special.
A selection of veggies to grow from seed in Autumn:
- Carrot
- Beetroot
- Snow Peas
- Onion
A selection of seedling veggies and herbs to plant in Autumn:
- Broccoli
- Cabbage
- Cauliflower
- Celery
- Bok Choy
- Lettuce
- Spinach
- Parsley
- Oregano
- Coriander
- Mint
Most of all, have fun gardening with the kids and enjoy whatever you get to eat. You may even be able to share your fresh produce with neighbours, friends and family.
At Play & Go Adelaide we make every effort to provide accurate information to the best of our knowledge at the time of publication. We recommend confirming times, dates and details directly before making any plans as details may be subject to change.
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