How do I teach my child basic gardening?
Kids are wildly imaginative tiny humans. As parents or caretakers of these littles, keeping everything fun and entertaining is basically our main job. Even things like cleaning their rooms, picking up their toys, and putting away their clothes has to be a game. Otherwise, slim to no chance they actually do it.
Let’s take gardening for example. Since the title of this article is “How do I teach my child basic gardening?”, it’s probably a good idea to start with something fun and engaging to keep their focus. Face it, no matter what you try to do, or how hard you try and do it, kids are becoming more and more addicted to their electronics. This isn’t the 80s and 90s anymore (yeah millennials, I’m talking to you), where being in the house all day was quite possibly the worst thing you could do to us. Now, it's a miracle if you can get them out of the house at all.
So how do I teach my child basic gardening?
Most people are afraid to start gardening with kids because they think it will become another chore. By making gardening fun for kids, it will not only become a hobby, but it will be a great way for you to spend quality time with your children outside! It also will teach your kids a new skill, which is invaluable in today’s world. I’ll break this down to you in 5 easy steps because if you’re raising little humans, you need simple gardening tips and easy gardening hacks to get started.
5 Easy Kid-Friendly Gardening Tips For Beginners:
Step one: Get yourself a at home gardening kit that is kid friendly!
Kids need kid-sized things, which is why at Fresh Earth Bistro, our team makes gardening fun and enjoyable for your children by including activities, puzzles, word searches and coloring pages. Check out our kids gardening activity book and at-home grow kits.
If you feel like getting fancy, you can get your kids their own watering can, small wheel barrow, gardening shovels, gardening gloves and even a little gardening apron. You don’t NEED these supplies to get started with simple gardening, but once your kids become expert growers, you may want to get them kid-friendly gardening supplies to help your children easily maintain their new hobby. Check out this article for tips on gardening tool kits for kids.
Step two: Get yourself some good seeds to grow with kids!
Go with your children to pick our seeds and soil! Let them take the reign on what they want to plant. It will make them feel involved and more responsible over their garden. We recommend True Leaf if you are looking to order seeds online.
You can check out your nearest Lowe’s or Home Depot for soil, but we recommend supporting local. Head to your local farmer’s market to grab soil and seeds, you’ll also find some other gardening supplies there as well!
Step Three: Make your life easier by utilizing square foot gardening!
Purchase a Seeding Square! This is the easiest way to get the most bang for your buck! It’s kid friendly, and takes us a minimal amount of space. The template shows correct seed spacing with color-coded holes matched to a planting chart of 46 types of vegetables, allowing you to quickly know where to drop seed (or seedlings). From there you poke the color-coded holes and plant your seeds. That’s it…just don’t forget to water!
Step Four: Make yourself a watering schedule for your garden.
Most plants do best when they are watered 2-3 times a week, but you also must factor in the rain. You don’t want to over water your plants, as that can be just as bad as not watering your plants enough! Your vegetable garden needs just the right amount of water to make sure your seeds grow properly and sprout into vegetables you can harvest and enjoy with your family.
A general rule of thumb is to water your plants around one inch per week. This doesn’t necessarily mean you should give your plants one inch of water once a week. Your vegetable garden will do much better if you water them a little less a few times a week to ensure the soil maintains the right amount of moisture.
FEEL YOUR SOIL! This is YOUR vegetable garden. You can follow general watering and maintenance guidelines for your garden, however, make sure you feel the soil and see how moist it is. A good test is to see if your soil has the right amount of moisture is to see if you can roll it into a ball and it sticks together. If you pick up your soil and it crumples in your hand, it’s time to give it a little bit of water.
For more tips about how to water your vegetable garden, check out the Almanac’s Guide for Watering Vegetables. There are a few apps you can download on your phone to help you keep track of your garden’s watering schedule, you can check that out here: Top Watering Tracker Apps.
If you want to make keeping track of your garden more kid-friendly, consider printing a water tracker template that you can use with your child so they can be more hands on in the gardening maintenance! You can customize it to fit your vegetable garden, and your kids will feel more involved in taking care of their own vegetables. Get your FREE Fresh Earth Bistro printable water tracker download here.
Let’s grow something together!
Whether you are a busy mom looking to spend more time outside with your child, or you are looking to teach your kids a new gardening hobby—we are here to help!
