Gardening with Kids: Why It’s Fun and Important
Plus Tips for Getting Started and great tools for gardening with your family
Gardening provides so many benefits that you’ll be thrilled to realize how easy a hobby it can be. Far from a challenge requiring any special skills or prerequisite knowledge or experience, anyone interested in growing their own food can do it, and with the kids involved no less.
With the right gardening gear, with a bit of time invested, and a bit of planning before you start, you and your family can grow foods you will not only enjoy eating, but that you will take pleasure and pride in raising, too.
The benefits of gardening with kids start young and extend for a lifetime. You can garden with toddlers or preschoolers, helping instill patience and diligence; you can raise food with children in kindergarten or grade school, teaching them where food comes from and about the connectedness of the world; and you can teach kids of any age – or learn more yourself – about healthier eating and, of course, cooking with the best-tasting food you’ve ever had.
Because whether it’s all about freshness, whether it’s the power of suggestion, or a healthy mix of the two, nothing tastes better than the foods your family grows itself.
Digging in the soil provides a positive sensory experience for children of all ages.
The best easy countertop garden kits
A Back to the Roots Mushroom Grow Kit or a Tomato Grow Kit makes it so simple to grow your own foods that you can use them with kids of any age. All you’ll need to add is water and the steps to grow and harvest your foods are all laid out for you. These kits are the perfect introduction to at-home gardening for the home that has never gardened before.
An all-in-one indoor home garden system
Make no mistake, an AeroGarden is not a kit that you use once then toss, it’s a complete garden system that can be used over and over again, and with which you can raise veggies, herbs and even some fruits. And all you really need to do to grow those foods is insert some pods in the base then add water and nutrients when a flashing light tells you to do so. We “plant” our AeroGarden right around the time we harvest the last of our outdoor veggies so we’re never long without fresh foods.
A raised planter takes your garden to the next level
Pun intended, but puns aside, a raised planter bed can be assembled on a patio, on a deck (just put a tarp under it) or right on the ground and provides you a large but contained space for planting which is critical because that lets you control the type of soil, nutrients, and fertilizers used therein. You can fill a planter box with high quality soil ordered right online, bought locally, or that you source yourself, and then you can grow plenty of your family’s favorite foods, whether you raise them from seed or you buy established plants at a local garden center and transfer them into the earth. Kids will love helping as a full-scale garden like this takes shape, and they’ll love tending to it and eating from it over the weeks and months, too.
A good pair of kids gardening gloves is a must
These cute yet rugged kid-sized gardening gloves will protect little hands from pokes and scrapes, help keep those green thumbs (and palms and other fingers) a bit cleaner, and will also give kids a sense of ownership of the whole process.
A great pair of gardening gloves for you? A must also
Why do you get great gloves like this built-to-last pair from Give’r when the kids only got good gloves? Because your hands won’t grow, so go ahead and invest in pair that will last you for years. Oh, and they feel great from the first wearing, too.
Sharp garden shears make all the difference
Don’t use scissors to work in your garden – that’s like the proverbial knife to gunfight. Sort of. It’s more like your scissors may be damaged by gardening or, worse still, may lead to imprecise cuts that damage your precious plants. Invest a few bucks in quality gardening shears, you won’t regret it.
Committed to gardening? Then kit up
A basic set of smaller gardening tools will let you easily turn and prep soil and dig holes needed to transplant your, well, plants. This one has two hand trowels that are great for sharing with little gardeners. A more comprehensive set of gardening tools will also help you tend and harvest them. And this one comes with a charming and handy carrying bag, too. Here again there are plenty of tools to share with your gardening kids.
Gardening with toddlers, preschoolers, or any young child helps instill patience and an appreciation and awareness for the process of growing food. And once that food is ready to harvest, regardless of their age, they can’t keep their hands off!
