subject: How To Make A Garden Fun For Young Children? [print this page] Gardening, be it flowers and grass or fruit and vegetables, is an activity that relaxes adults who enjoy it. Families with children will want to begin to draw the little ones into gardening not only as a pastime but also as a learning experience. Sharing a garden with children can open up fun and original experiences that adults, sometimes set in their ways, will enjoy even more so than their kids.
Children are often impatient creatures. Teaching them how to transplant tomatoes or eggplants is useful but the wait from planting to produce can lead to disinterest. Planting a salad parcel can give children a more immediate contact with the growing cycle, as most salad plants sprout and grow rapidly.
Set aside one small corner of the garden as the children's salad parcel. Have on hand the following:
- radish, spinach and beet seeds
- onion sets
- marigold plantings
- red oak leaf lettuce and a favourite green leaf lettuce plantings
- sticks and banners
Begin by helping your children transplant the marigolds around the top of their parcel. Explain that, with their distinctive smell, marigolds not only attract butterflies and ladybirds but also ward away unwelcome insects.
At the back of the parcel help the children to dig a row for beets. Explain that each seed is a small fruit with several seeds inside, from which many beet plants will sprout. Have the children plant a stick with a banner that they've prepared with the word beets or a drawing to mark the row.
Continue with the spinach and radish seeds. These are fast-growing plants that should sprout in just a few days and, in the case of radishes, grow to maturity quite rapidly. Now that the children have seen how to make a trench and place the seeds, they can be left on their own to sow these.
Onion sets are easy to plant. Patting the soil down firmly a bit, show the children how to make a hole with a broomstick to a depth marked on the pole. An onion set is dropped into each hole, making sure the root side is down. Explain the importance of this to your children, reminding them of the roots once the harvest of the onions begins.
Finally, the lettuce is ready to be transplanted. Remind the children of how they have transplanted the marigolds and encourage them to alternate the colours of the lettuce plants to make an attractive design for their parcel. Get the watering can out and demonstrate briefly how to water, explaining that this will be a regular responsibility of theirs to ensure they have a fresh salad promptly.
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