Your Child's First Garden

Photograph by John Sullivan

Gardening can be a wonderful experience for small children. The trick is to not make it too challenging. In general, anything planted in a child's garden should be:

• Easy to grow
  
• Interesting or attractive
  
• Useful
  
• Safe for children
  

In terms of flowers, I think the easiest to grow are zinnias and marigolds. No contest. I don't even know if it's possible to kill a marigold. Both of these flowers are also very sturdy and easy to pick for arrangements and bouquets -- something nearly every child loves doing.

Nasturiums and four o'clocks are pretty easy, too, and morning glories aren't too bad if you're willing to help out with the whole climbing-the-the-trellis thing. Nasturiums have the added benefit of being edible -- both flowers and leaves -- although if your children are very young, this may not be a practice you want to encourage. 

Among the vegetables, beans and peas are probably the easiest to plant and care for. Your child will enjoy planting them, tending them, and picking the results. Peas are an early plant, too, so you'll be able to reuse the territory after they're harvested.

Corn is another vegetable that's easy to grow. Just be sure to think about where you're planting it, as it tends to provide a lot of shade for the garden once it really gets going. The same thing goes for sunflowers, a cheerful flower that also provides a product: delicious seeds both for snack time and to feed the birds this winter. (Or the pet hamster, if your child has one.)

If you decide to grow tomatoes, I'd recommend just picking up a couple of plants at the corner store. You can grow them from seeds, but it's a lot of work, and not worth the effort, in my book. The same goes for peppers.

Your child might enjoy planting onions from sets, because it's a little different from the normal type of seed planting. Potatoes, too, might make an interesting change.

Many people think it's a good idea to have your child to plant broccoli and cauliflower, in an effort to encourage them to eat more of them. These people have obviously never tried to grow broccoli or cauliflower. Personally, I love both of those vegetables but I don't love to grow them. (And, if your child ever gets a look at a bug-infested broccoli plant, he'll likely never touch the vegetable again.)

Whatever you chose to plant, make sure that both you and your child have fun doing it. And don't get too ambitious. Your child may be excited to plant a lot of vegetables, but the excitement will pale once she realized she's got to weed it, too.

Photo credit: Photograph by John Sullivan, who released it into the public domain on Wikimedia Commons.

Is Container Gardening for You?

Container Gardening has been around for quite some time, but in the past few years, it's become really popular. It's easy to understand why. There are a lot of benefits to container gardening, for starters:

• Nearly anyone can grow plants successfully in a container garden. If you're having a bit of a problem bending over to weed, or if you're just not as agile as you used to be, container gardening may be the perfect solution.
  
  
• Set out your delicate seedlings too early? No problem! With a container garden you can just bring them inside until the danger of frost is past. You can extend your growing season a little in the fall, too, by bringing them inside over those first freezing nights.
  
  
• If you're like me, you don't always place your plants in the ideal spot the first time. If your prize plants are located in a spot that is a little too shady (or even a little too sunny), you can just pick them up and move them to a better location.
  
  
• No space? You can easily grow both flowers and vegetables on your patio or balcony. Just be sure to pick the more compact varieties for optimum results.
  
  
• Container gardening is ideal for children. There's less weeding, which, let's face it, is the most boring part of the whole job. They're also likely to need less assistance from adults in prepping the soil.
  
  
• You may have fewer problems with disease. If you start out with clean potting soil, your plants are less likely to contract diseases from the soil.
  

If you think you'd like to try container gardening, there are lots of good books on the subject. (The ones listed below all have excellent reviews from Amazon customers.)

Picture credit: Photograph by Peter Stevens, published on Wikimedia Commons under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic License.