Gardening With Kids: Why You Should Start Early
Gardening With Kids: Why You Should Start Early
A garden is a space planted with flowers, vegetables, fruits, and other plants. It can be as simple as a small spot on your porch or patio or it can be an entire backyard filled with vegetable beds and flowers.
Starting your child out early in gardening helps them to learn responsibility and gives them space to experiment and explore creativity.
A garden also adds some green to any environment, which is good for both children and adults! In addition to making you more environmentally friendly, gardening has many other health benefits.
It’s never too early to begin teaching your children about nature and farming, especially when it comes to gardening!
As soon as they’re old enough to recognize seeds and plants, they can start learning how to care for the natural world around them.
Here are some of the many benefits of gardening with kids.
How Can My Child Benefit From A Garden?
Here are some reasons why it’s great to have your kids help you start a new garden.
There are a lot of different ways that your child can benefit from being part of a growing garden. If you’re raising your kids, you know how much we all learn by getting our hands dirty, working with our hands, and exploring all of nature.
To top it off, gardening has been shown to improve academic performance in children, and teaching them about composting and becoming more eco-friendly is one of the best things you can do for them!
What Are The Benefits Of Starting Early?
So why should you let your kids get their hands dirty? Here are a few of our favorite reasons to encourage gardening with kids:
A young mind is ready to learn as soon as they reach preschool age.
It’s never too early to start your child on a fun, creative, educational, and rewarding hobby like gardening.
By starting them early, you can help develop important skills such as patience, persistence, and math skills.
While these might not seem like gardening skills at first glance, helping children understand why planting an extra seed or thinning out plants will lead to more fruit is all part of showing them how things work.
If nothing else, gardening teaches patience because there are times when it takes years for plants to grow into something substantial and enjoyable!
Do You Need A Lot Of Space To Start A Child’s Garden?
When you think of planting a garden, you probably imagine rows and rows of vegetables and flowers, which is great if you have plenty of room.
But even if your backyard or plot of land is small, there are still plenty of options to grow fresh produce.
A vertical garden can be as simple as a few potted plants on your deck or balcony.
If space is tight, you can always consider container gardening – it’s not only easy on space but also gives children a chance to care for their own ‘plants’.
Sure they may not grow as tall or produce as much food compared to their ground-level counterparts, but it’s a lot less back-breaking work for kids!
Where Can I Buy Seeds?
If you live in an area that gets enough sun and your soil is healthy, you can buy flower, vegetable, and herb seeds at your local nursery or garden center.
If you don’t have a specific location in mind, consider a mail-order catalog like Burpee, which allows customers to customize their seed packets by choosing from more than 20 different varieties of flowers, herbs, and vegetables.
And for those who want to grow something more traditional—like a garden full of pumpkins or zucchini—check out your local agricultural extension service or try plant-master Johnny’s Selected Seeds.
The company specializes in heirloom and hybrid varieties to ensure sustainable growing practices from year to year.
Planning Your Garden
It’s important to have a plan when it comes to your garden. That way, you’ll know what you need and get it in one fell swoop.
Plus, if your kids are involved in your garden, they’ll learn about growth cycles and how seeds become plants that produce fruits and vegetables we can eat.
They’ll also get a better understanding of where their food comes from and just how hard people work so that they can enjoy that burger or vegetable pasta dish.
It might even motivate them to help out more around the house! In addition to practical life lessons, gardening with kids is an awesome way for you to spend quality time together while getting some much-needed sun!
Conclusion
Starting a garden is an easy way to get kids interested in growing their food and learning about where food comes from.
Starting a family garden also brings with it an opportunity for lessons in science, math, and biology.
These are some ideas that can help you get started, but you may find other reasons to start a garden of your own! Make sure to adjust these projects so they’re easy enough for children to do by themselves.
