Gardening with Small Children

Gardening is not only a soothing and relaxing hobby for you, it’s also a great way to stimulate your child’s senses and instill in them the love for growing things.

Gardening with your children doesn’t have to be a large or long and drawn out process – in fact, this can lead to a feeling of being overwhelmed for both of you.

Starting with a small garden, with only a few pots on your porch or if you live in an apartment where space is limited, a few plants under a grow light.

In order to keep your young and up and coming gardeners interested and excited about their budding new hobby, choose plants that are colorful, flavorful and fragrant. Use plants that come from large seeds so that little hands are able to easily sow them into the soil. Make sure you choose plants that you will be able to harvest quickly so that your child doesn’t lose interest.

Children like to imitate what mommy and daddy or grandma and grandpa are doing so be sure to include them in the garden, even if it’s just a small corner in the garden rather than the pots on your porch. You can give them jobs like weeding small areas, give them a spray bottle with water to spray plants that aren’t to be completely saturated.

Keep in mind that when you are teaching your children about gardening and they become much more regular at it, you’ll want to make sure that there are no poisonous or other harmful plants in the general facility of the plants you are allowing them to tend to.

Teach your children right from the beginning that it never ok to put any plant in their mouths – even organic gardening can have harmful plants.