Tips for Gardening with Children — Important gardening tips for children to remember include learning about complimentary plants and drainage.
Other tips include information about dirt and insects. When you share these with your kids, they’ll carry the information with them for the rest of their lives, and hopefully grow a garden of their own one day.
What are Key Gardening with Children Tips to Remember?
With some important gardening with children tips to remember, you’ll be cultivating a family activity that may carry on into the next generation. Many kids will enjoy learning tips about bugs, dirt and other gardening aspects. Use these tips to help get your children started with gardening.
Teaching important gardening tips for children to remember in the early stages helps them to cultivate great gardening habits. Your children can learn the art of gardening at a very early age, from sprouting seeds to harvesting their own vegetables. Some children want to stay away from gardening altogether because they don’t know what to expect. Use these tips to help ease them into the joy and work of growing their own gardens:
1. Bugs Can Help
Some children love bugs and will be more interested in the creepy crawlies in your garden than the garden itself. Then there are other kids who want nothing to do with them. Teach them that some bugs actually help the growth process.
These bugs are called beneficial, and they help to get rid of other problem bugs. You can take it one step further and do a mini Science project. Have your children examine the bugs that are already in the garden space and conduct some research to determine the beneficial versus the non beneficial ones. Knowing the difference is one of the important gardening tips for children to learn early on and utilize as adult gardeners.
2. Drainage Is Important
Kids learn along the way that dirt, sunlight, and water are important to helping plants grow. What many don’t learn and understand is that you also need proper drainage. You need to teach them that drainage is important for the plant, or the roots will drown.
The plant won’t grow at all or well enough without proper drainage. Show them drainage in the pots you buy or teach them to make their own. You can also demonstrate the same principle if they are going to garden directly in the ground.
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3. Getting Dirty Is Necessary
If your kids like bugs, then they’ll most likely enjoy dirt, too. However, some kids may not care about getting dirty. Your job is to convince them that it’s necessary. They can use gloves, a gardening apron, and even a hat, but getting dirty is a necessary part of doing garden work. If you present this fact to them as one of the important gardening tips for children to remember, they can prepare for it and not get annoyed or distracted.
4. Save Space with Complementary Plants
Your children can maximize garden plants by planting complementary plants. For example, radishes and carrots make a great pair because you can harvest radishes a lot earlier than carrots. Radishes also grow quickly, which is important for kids who are eager to see results.
Encourage them to research other plants and flowers that complement the plants they want to grow, and to experiment with growing them together. Your children can save garden space, which is important if there’s not a lot of room to work with.
Gardening is a skill that your children will appreciate now and in the future. Teach them these important gardening with children tips and you’ll enjoy the fruits of your labor when you see them design and grow their own gardens.
References
- Gardening with Kids: How It Affects Your Child’s Brain, Body and Soul via PBS.org
- 10 Benefits of Gardening with Kids | Mommy University
- A Beginners Guide to Gardening with Kids – Messy Motherhood
- Growing Vegetables with Children – Kidsinthegarden
- Kids Gardening; Best Vegetables to Grow with Kids – The Educators Spin on it
- Checklists & Printables: Gardening with Kids – Lemonlime Adventures
- Recycled Container Gardening with Kids – Inspiration Laboratories
- Small Garden Spaces for Kids – At Home with Ali
- 35 Helpful Tips on How to Garden With Kids! – themaven.net
- Image Credit: (Cylonka Bsg)
