Organic Gardening with Kids
When organic gardening with kids, simplicity is the name of the game. Keep your garden space small – a 6 x 6 foot (2 x 2 m.) patch should be plenty. If you don’t have the space for an in-ground garden, containers are a great alternative. Make sure to leave room to walk between your rows, as this will make for easier movement and teach kids to stay on paths. You can put down some flat stones to make a clear path to stick to as well.
Organic Garden Lesson Ideas
When picking plants to grow, opt for those that have fast, solid payoff. Radishes grow fast and early and should get kids excited for a whole summer of gardening. Beans and peas grow fast and produce lots of pods that are fun to pick and easy to eat. Plants like squash, tomatoes, and peppers should keep producing throughout the summer, and you and your kids can track the progress of the fruit, watching it grow and change color. If you have the space, supplement your faster growing crops with a pumpkin vine. You can watch it grow all summer and make a homegrown jack-o-lantern in the fall. If you’re looking for easy-to-grow flowers, you can’t go wrong with marigolds and sunflowers. Whatever you choose to grow, make it special and be forgiving. Even if the seeds spill, or they don’t get sown in a straight line, your kids will see them grow into real plants and real vegetables, giving them a cool look into nature and food production. And since the garden is “organic,” with no harmful chemicals, the garden will be a welcoming place for pollinators, another great topic to cover with your children as they watch in wonder while pollination takes place.
