Learning to Garden with Children

Many people love to garden and they happily pass that love on to their children. By encouraging help and teaching them about the different things you need to know to garden well. But what if your just getting started yourself? Here is a basic how to guide to making gardening an easy and fun past time, For you and your children.

First you need to prepare the land or soil. Some people have room to make a garden in the yard. Others opt to container garden. Whatever you decide you have room for there is ground work to be done. You will need a decent soil, i like to buy mine at a local dairy, they premix in old manure for well fertilized soil, and its only a fraction on if the cost of what soil is at a greenhouse or any others store for that matter. Soil can get very expensive so look around and ask around at greenhouses about where is a good inexpensive place to get decent soil. You also at this step need to decide where your garden is going to go. For me it was right out my back door, for my parents it was on the side of their house. You want an area that gets good sunlight, but some shade wont hurt it a bit. In fact shade can be a very helpful tool for gardening as too much sun can burn some more delicate plants.

Once you have your area planned out for your garden, you need to mark it off. We did this by building a wooden box around my mothers garden, and putting large rocks around mine. With my mothers garden, we put in the frame and filled it with soil afterwords. With my garden, we put the soil down and then outlined the outside with large rocks, later it was fenced in. Either way, we had a garden with defined boundaries. This is a great step for children to be involved in. Putting the soil into the garden, smoothing it out, creating the outside boundaries of the garden. True many children prefer to play in the soil but they are there and its part of teaching them. Create rows in your garden, you want them to be about 8 inches wide, with a space in between at least wide enough for you to walk through. Build up your rows there the plants are able to drain properly into the walk paths. We try to build our rows up at least 6-8 inches higher then the areas left to walk in.

You need to decide what kind of veggies you are going to grow. I would suggest easy to grow veggies that are a favorite of your family. Some simple vegetables are carrots, potatos, peas, lettuce, radish, chives broccoli and cauliflower. When you know what you are going to grow, its time to plant. We generally plant full and half rows of different vegetables, based on what we eat the most. Carrots and radishes for example get a full row each, and our garden is 20 ft by 30 ft. So we have a 20 ft row of each. Peas, because they are so plentiful, only take up half a row, often with beans on the other half. Where your veggies are placed isn't so important. So long as you mark the rows so you know whats inside. Follow the instructions on the back of the seed packages to be sure you are planting each plant correctly. Pea plants for example, look like dried out peas, and each seed will grow a new vine. We plant these about 2 inches apart. Carrots we draw a line through the center of our row and just sprinkle the seeds along the inside and cover. Carrots always need to be thinned, no matter how you plant them. Radishes we plant much the same way. Their seeds are very small.

Some plants such as broccoli, cauliflower and potatos, we buy pre started at greenhouses. Potatos are especially easy to start, you simply let a few of your potatos grow eyes and then plant them. To plant a potato, cut the eye with a chunk of potato off the potato itself. We try for about a full inch of potato attached to the eye. The place about 4-6 inches down in the soil. We then cover the area with compost. It helps them grow better. Broccoli and cauliflower we like to buy as starts because these plants need to be started long before you are ready to plant outside. Our growing season isn't long enough.
Most children love to help plant, they love to pick out the plants they are growing, and love to help dig the small holes and drop in a seed. My son was 2 years old when he started gardening with us. Age isn't much of a factor, any child of any age can be given a job, or help you out.

Once you have your rows planted and marked, you need to fertilize and water. I like to use miracle grow, you can get a pre filled attachment, that hooks to your hose, and replacements. To water my gardens, we use a sprinkler system placed in the center that is always attached to the hose. You simply turn it on for a half hour every day. Fertilizing only needs to be done once a week.

That is the start of gardening. It doesn't end there, in fact your work has just started. As plants begin to grow, you need to know what to look for. Some plants that will grow will be weeds, others will be the starts of your veggies. Keeping the packages that your seeds came in will remind you of what your plants foliage looks like. Be sure when weeding that you don't accidentally pull up too many of your sprouting vegetables. Vine plants, such as beans and peas need to have some kind of fence to grow up along. We use chicken wire placed along the center of the row. As the plants get taller we gently, VERY gently direct them to the fence, and wind the aerial roots around the fence, we call them feelers.

Spending time in your garden every day weeding will help your vegetables to grow. This can be a peaceful time, or time to spend with your family. And soon you will have vegetables to harvest when fully grown. Some plants such as carrots and radishes will need to be thinned. Lettuce is a special kind of plant, so long as you don't pull the whole plant by the roots and just cut leaves off as you need them, the plant will continue to thrive and grow. Potatos are another plant that require some special care. When the plants begin to grow, remove the compost and begin build the soil up around the plant. As it grows in inches, you will need to bulk up the soil around its base. Potatos are grown in the roots of the plant, to harvest it you will need to dig the whole plant up at the end of the season.

Children especially love being able to go out to the garden and pick something to eat right then and there. Carrots and radishes, lettuce, chives and many other veggies can be eaten directly from the plant, although you may want to wash your root veggies first. Root veggies are the plants that grow the vegetable in their roots, IE potatos, carrots and radishes. Children can be involved in every step of gardening, From buying seeds, to laying soil, to weeding and harvesting. Teaching them a love of gardening will stay with them their whole lives. Its a rewarding and fulfilling lesson.