You Can Garden with Kids if You Want Fun, Frustration, and Education

Trying to garden with kids can be fun but it can also be a hassle depending on the age of your child. There are many companies making gardening tool sets for kids as well as special potted plants that you can grow with your kids. Gardening is a great way to bond with your child and get some exercise and sunshine at the same time.

Teach kids some lifestyle lessons

Growing a garden with kids can help you to teach them about the wonders of vegetables and fruits. You can use it to teach them how to eat healthy, or to teach them about why it is important that we start protecting the earth. Many valuable lessons can be learned from gardening.

Did you know that eating organic produce and organic processed fruits and vegetables will increase your antioxidant intake by about 30 percent over conventionally grown produce. Source: Antioxidant State of Science Review, The Organic Center, January 2005

If you’re worried about organic health benefits gardening with kids is a good way to enlist a little help and let them get involved in the process. They are more likely to use organic when they are older if they are exposed to it now.

Gardening teaches kids to be responsible

Tending a garden with kids can also give you a little break while making sure the kids learn some responsibility. Assign them special jobs in the garden like weeding or watering. You can also let them each have their own little garden. Let them plant what they want, and make sure they take care of it themselves.

They can see the effects that their decisions make on their garden. If they decide not to take care of it, it dies. If they decide to be responsible, and water and weed their garden then they will have beautiful flowers and vegetables. They learn cause and effect and the effect their decisions have on everything around them.

Get children out of the house

Starting a garden with kids can also be a great way to get the kids out of the house and away from the television. Some TV is okay but many children today are getting too much of it and not enough exercise. Taking your kids outside with you can help motivate them to play outside.

Organic avoids dangerous chemicals

If you have traditionally used chemicals on your garden such as pesticides and fertilizers, you should learn about the organic health benefits gardening with children. Kid’s bodies can’t handle all those chemicals, and they could get sick because of them. Organic gardening will keep you and your children healthier, and make your fruits and vegetables taste better.

The average child in America is exposed to five pesticides daily in their food and drinking water. Switching to an organic diet for just five days virtually eliminates any sign of exposure to organophosphate insecticides among school-age children. Source: Reducing Pesticide Exposures Critical Issues Report, The Organic Center, August 2006

At 2 years is a good time to start

Kids can start spending time in the garden with you around a year and a half old but you have to watch them. It’s natural for them to want to taste everything, and part of how they learn, but you don’t want to look up to catch your toddler eating a worm. You need to be especially careful not to plant anything that could be toxic. It’s probably better to wait until your child is two before letting them help in the garden.

Make gardening a play and learning activity

Children are naturally curious and willing to learn. They always want to help you do everything. Tending your garden with kids can teach them to enjoy things like that now, before they become addicted to video games and television and don’t want to go outside.

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