Get Your Kids Gardening WIth These Simple Tips

Lots of kids are really interested in the natural world, and studies show that there are great physical and emotional benefits that come from spending more time interacting with nature. Why not encourage this interest in your child and get them to do some gardening? Whether you have a huge vegetable plot or no outside space at all, it’s always possible to get something growing.

Salad Leaves

In a medium-sized pot, or outside in the vegetable patch, sow lettuce, radicchio, spinach, or cress seeds in moist soil, about half an inch under the surface. Keep well-watered and in a brightly lit space, and within a few weeks, you should have a crop of baby salad leaves. At this small stage, the leaves are sweeter and juicier than what you can typically buy in the shops, meaning that children often prefer the taste. The fact that they have grown the leaves themselves will also encourage your kid to try a few!

Strawberries

Plant the seeds in early spring, and by late summer you could have a bumper crop of these sweet red berries. You can plant these fruits in the ground, in pots, or even in hanging baskets. In early summer they produce pretty white flowers which attract pollinators, so while you’re waiting for them to fruit you can observe all the wildlife around them. Make sure you protect them from pests such as slugs and snails, which find these plants almost as tasty as we do!

Spring Onions

Chop them up into a salad, fry them in an omelet, or eat them sprinkled over cheese on toast. Spring onions are tasty and easy to grow. Simply pop the seeds about one inch below the soil surface, make sure the soil is quick-draining and that the site you choose for the onions gets plenty of sun. Sow throughout the spring and summer months, they will start sprouting within a few days and should be ready to eat in a matter of weeks.