SHELLEY HEAPHY for The Parents’ Voice

Gardening will teach our children how to interact with nature. From a young age they will understand the process of growing a seed, caring for it and harvesting the fruits of their labour. They can plant it, watch it as it begins sprouting and then watch as it grows taller each week. How can the kids help? Read on for some great reasons and ways to involve your children.

1. Digging, it all starts with digging a small hole and kids love to dig. Explain the spacing and let them get dirty.
2. Planting, try some new additions to your garden, let them pick a thing or two to plant and that can be their charges. Some great instant growers are radishes and onions. They’ll be happy to see quick progress with those plants. Having them choose their vegetable to plant might actually get them eating some new things. Win-win.
3. Caring for the garden. Whether it be small indoor gardens, small outdoor gardens or large ones, teach your child how to care for the garden. How much watering needs to be done? When is it best to water plants and why? When you are doing this with them, talk to them and explain why you do it. Honestly, we forget to tell our kids why to do what we are doing (if that makes sense). Talk it out, answer their questions and show them how to do it – they are much more likely to remember it.
4. Weeding — weeding is one of the most important jobs of gardening. Teach your child to differentiate between what a plant looks like and what the weeds look like. Give them a small bucket and have them fill it with weeds. This is a job that can be done daily (and should be). Explain why we have to get rid of the weeds and what happens when we don’t.
5. As summer passes, your plants will grow. They can be watching the transformations that occur and tending to their plants as they need it.
6. Weather conditions are something to watch for, are we having a drought? Do they need to water twice a day? Have we had lots of rain, making us hold off on watering the garden for a day? Teach them to pay attention to the weather around us.
7. When the produce actually starts producing, they get to collect. Teach them how to know if their vegetables are ready to be pulled, how big they need to be before you take them off a branch. Teach them to replant, each onion you pull out a new one can be planted. Teach them how to wash their produce. Most importantly, they get to enjoy their produce. In our home, tomatoes and cucumbers are the best sellers. The tomatoes are pulled off and gobbled down, cucumbers sliced up with every single meal. They appreciate and enjoy their vegetables that much more having been a part of the process.
8. Canning and making preserves. I don’t know much about this process but I am learning a bit more each year. Last year I made salsa and once I did it once I was hooked. I must have made 10 batches and we are still enjoying last years salsa. This year, I hope to add something else to our cupboard. This can be a super fun process to involve the kids in, choose something that is eaten at your home. My kids love our homemade salsa and are proud to grab it out of the cupboard instead of buying it in the store. What they learn now will carry them through their own lives and may just be something that they carry on in their families.
9. Some families with large gardens may even be able to teach their child how to sell their produce. At a young age, children can actually be the ones earning a bit of money from their hard work. This is a life lesson that our kids definitely need to learn. It will help them appreciate the value of money.

We will wait a few weeks before planting our garden but I’m already anxious to do so and to watch as it sprouts from our tending and love. Enjoy, together as a family.