Finally! A Garden for the Kids..
Planting a Garden With Children
I feel very fortunate that I'm able to share my enthusiasm for gardening with the children and this year I finally get to do something I've been wanting to do for a long time - actually create a garden for the young school kids I work with.
As luck has it, the new Pre-K/Kindergarten teacher lives right across from the school, has great light in her yard, lots of water and is willing to take care of the plants over the summer holidays! Perfect! The one draw back is it will have to be a container garden (I do prefer planting directly in the soil) but that has many upsides too!
Advantages of Container Gardening:
- can be more manageable, easier for kids to care for and gives better control over growing conditions
- some, if small enough, can be started indoors and moved outside when the weather is more suitable
- is more flexible and portable. We can position our plants in locations best suited to them and move them as the season changes to catch the best light or for more shelter plus you can bringing them indoors to grow them on in the winter time.
- can be better adapted for accessibility, have them at heights you want and can use areas without arable soil or places such as balcony, deck or concrete pads.
- can be less chance of having pest damage
Right now it is in the planning stage, figuring out such things as:
- How much growing space we have. We have a long counter top space for getting things started indoors with lights to fit over them, and there is a large open space on the south side of the house for outdoor gardening.
- What to plant. We want things that are fast and easy to grow for some early success in our gardening and can fit into the school season plus things the children will eat.
Ideas I have for things to start with is
Our Fastest Growing Vegetables
- different seeds for making sprouts, like sunflower seeds, peas, alfalfa, radish and broccoli seeds
- lettuce, with some of the different colorful varieties
- radishes, the Easter egg variety which has many different colors
Plants That Take Longer But We Can Start Earlier
- peas and bush bean plants. A cool way to get an early start on them is to grow them in eaves troughs indoors, properly spaced, then just slide them out of the trough and into the larger containers outside.
- potatoes in grow bags. I have one that allows us to reach into a flap on the side to harvest potatoes with out harvesting the whole plant.
- cucumbers, that are suitable for containers like cool breeze. I want to start in peat or paper pots that we can transplant the plant and pot into the bigger containers without disturbing their roots.
- cherry tomatoes. A project that we already have going on each year with the Pre-K kids is growing Tiny Tim tomatoes, started early so each child will have a fruiting tomato plant, in a 1 gallon pot, to take home at the end of the school year. We can plant out a few of those in the school garden too.
- Little Tom Thumb carrots can be grown in containers too. Kids seem to love carrots.
We don't want to make it too big and get overwhelmed but I do love gardening with children! I love their sense of wonderment of seeing the miracle of a seed growing into a full, food giving plant! I also like them to start picking up that skill of growing your own food, a skill which once they have, they will never have to know hunger!
"Let's Garden - Beginner Gardeners Tips" flip through it here
If you would like to do some gardening with children - here is a beginners gardening guide I created -
You can flip through it here
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This is sheer magic, @porters. A life's beginning for a new generation. If you want some blue butterfly pea seeds, just DM me a postal address and I'll send them over. The kids will love making blue tea from them, and then watching it turn purple with a squeeze of lime. They should do well in a warm spot in spring and grow fast. You can show the kids where Chiang Mai, Thailand, is on the map, and teach them about seed saving too. :)
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That is very kind of you @artemislives! I'm trying to keep it simple but it is interesting to experiment with something from another contry - would it flower if i start them indoors in Febuary - we would need to harvest by middle of June or perhaps they can do their harvesting in the next school year at the beginning of September.
I will direct message you - thank-you!
Wow! That looks like a great project!
Just curious why it must be container gardening? Any gardening is good with the kids though! Very cool you will be able to do this with them. :))
Because the house is only rented and there is no garden dug or much space for it but lots of deck and gravel!
Oh! Well that makes it different. At least if she moves, you won't have lost your work and plants. :))
Oh that is SO wonderful @porters! The fact that we live in a world so drenched in technology, I think it is even more important now than it ever was before, that kids get their hands dirty in a garden on a regular basis! There is nothing as rewarding as watching a garden grow - and not only that, but the life skill itself and developing a love and appreciation for nature is SO important.
I was blessed to have my mom @lizziesworld who got me into gardening from a very young age as she is a total green fingers garden nut! haha and I am ever grateful for that!
I figured that about your mom for I have caught a few of her gardening posts - awesome that you picked it up at a young age!
I was really happy that this opportunity came up for i had been trying to get a school garden started for some time but kept running into snags - now it is full steem ahead!
That really is wonderful! I look forward to seeing the progress :)
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Teaching gardening to the children is really important. Even if they don't grow up to be farmers, it at least is educational and a good outlet for energy.
I was once involved in a project that tried to get 'bad kids' taking care of gardens. Most of them were just cutting classes or smoking and not actually doing terrible things. They didn't really like it though, but they were a little older being early teens mostly.
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I love this, it is such an important skill to have and so much fun for the kids. I done a lot of container gardening because of living in vehicles, it's so good to shoe kids that you can grow food anywhere. Have you though of pallet gardens too? xxx
I was thinking about you as I was writing this for I imagine you have done lots of gardening with your kids!
We will start with a simple garden this first year and when we have success with that we will expand. Pallet gardens are awesome!
This is such an awesome opportunity and so important for the kids to learn about. I like how you listed the advantages of the container garden. Have fun!