Four Must-Have Plants for Your Family Garden

Growing a garden is a highly satisfying hobby. Gardeners everywhere will tell you that planning, planting and caring for a garden is enjoyable and at times, therapeutic. However, nothing beats the first red ripe tomato of the season. You will never find produce in your grocery store as delicious as you get from your garden and that reward alone makes all the hard work and time worth while.

Gardening is also a great family activity. What better way to teach kids that perseverance and patience pay off. Kids can also learn all about the scientific process, about pollinators and other wild life. Certainly they will learn about horticulture, but they can also practice math skills and start to think about nutrition.

Kids will love resquesting special fruits or vegetables to grow in the garden and they will look forward to eating them too. Here are a few fruits and vegetables will love to grow to consider for your family garden.

Cherry Tomatoes

Cherry tomato plants will be available in home centers or nurseries when the danger of frost has passed. You can choose from regular red cherry tomatoes or yellow pear tomatoes, which taste just like the red ones, but are yellow and pear shaped. There are also pearl varieties and heirloom varieties. Cherry tomato plants are very prolific and one should be fine for a family, but with two you can have a little variety and share with the neighbors.

What makes cherry tomatoes so much fun for kids is that they can pick and eat until their hearts are content. Kids will love playing outside and getting their snack right from the garden.

Sunflowers

While sunflowers won't necessarily provide you with food, kids will love growing these giant flowers. Sunflowers come in many varieties. You can buy seeds for sunflowers with edible seeds, or you can buy seeds for sunflowers that only grow four feet high. Which ever sunflower you choose, a packet of seeds will cost around $2 and will be fun and easy to grow. You can choose to start the seeds indoors and move them outside when the weather is warm enough and the plants are big enough.

Kids will also love watching the head of the sunflower follow the sun as it moves across the sky. As your sunflower grows, take pictures with your child standing next to it, so that by the end of the season, you will have a great set of progressive pictures to look back on and see how far that little seed has come.

Pole Beans

Kids will get a whole new appreciation for the story "Jack and the Beanstalk" when they grow their very own pole beans. You can create a frame by tying bamboo stakes together, or you can simply stick a stake in the ground near every bean plant. With the right support, pole beans can also grow up a fence and will take up very little space in your garden.

When plants are established and the weather becomes warm, kids can practically see the vines growing as they will grow up to 5 inches a day. Have your child use a felt tipped pen in the morning, to make a mark on the trellis or pole where the vine is attached. Around dinner time, have your child go back out to the garden and see how their vines have grown. Take measurements over a week or keep a chart to collect data.

Many kids enjoy fresh green beans to canned or frozen green beans. One "kid" characteristic of fresh cooked green beans is that they squeak when you bite them. Some kids will even enjoy picking them right off the vine and eating them raw. It's a great way to get kids to eat their vegetables!

Pumpkins

Pumpkins are easy to grow, but will require as much space as you can provide and then some. For eating pumpkins, be sure to choose a "Pie" variety of pumpkin such as "sugar" variety. Other pumpkins varieties are better for Fall or Halloween carving and will state this on the packet. Another fun variety to consider is a miniature pumpkin that grows to about 3-4 inches in diameter.

Pumpkin seeds can be started indoors, and then moved outdoors after the threat of frost has passed. Late May or early June planting will ensure pumpkins by Halloween.

Kids will love having these fun plants in their garden. They will enjoy watching their progress as they grow through out the season and harvesting the rewards in the Fall.