We love growing vegetables and we would like that love to rub off on our daughter who is 2 and a half years old. We have been doing activities that involve nature and the outdoors to try and nurture her love for the vegetable garden.

Here’s a few ideas on how to get your children involved in Vegetable growing from a young age.

1. Sow some seeds in a pot

It could be cress seeds or it could be sunflower seeds. Start them off in a yogurt pot or similar in a bit of compost and see if your little ones want to water them with a small cup.

2. Grow some fruit or vegetables in your garden

Be the leader and show your children how it’s done, you don’t need to be an expert as everything to do with growing is a learning process. Start with Strawberries or tomatoes or peas as these seem to be a good bet when it comes to children eating them.

3. Give your child their own vegetable container or raised bed

We started our daughter this year with a medium sized pot and she scattered some radish and lettuce seeds. Radish is a good vegetable to grow if you want quick results. We have now planted a tomato plant in the same pot after the radishes.

4. Buy your child some child friendly garden tools

This will make them feel part of the action, they can copy mummy or daddy when digging in the garden, moving soil around and watering the plants. Also good for child’s play of mud pies.

5. Ask your child to help you in the garden

For example I needed to pot on my tomatoes and needed some 9cm diameter pots filling up with compost. I gave my daughter her mini trowel and a pot of compost and she filled up the pots and put them in a tray. She really surprises me sometimes how easy she follows instructions but children also are very observant and learn by what you do as well so I think she had been studying how I do it.

6. Take them outdoors to a park or wood to observe nature

Our daughter likes going to the woods to see the squirrels and the park to see the birds. She can point out an aeroplane from miles away and loves picking up leaves and cookers in the autumn.

Just being around nature can help with the love of nature. As children will be children there’s also a lots of fun to be had by jumping in leaves, jumping in puddles, balancing on logs and collecting pine cones.

7. Bring wildlife to your back garden

Bring wildlife into your back garden with plants that love bees, butterflies and insects. A water source like a bird bath or a small shallow sunken pot with stones can help bring other wildlife into your garden. Birds will fly in and out causing talking points with your child and keep mentioning the names of the birds and they will pick them up quickly.

We have the Field Study Council ID charts which she liked folding out when younger but now she’s knows the names of certain birds, she points them out in the ID chart when she see’s one in the garden.

Field Studies Council – Top 50 Garden Birds

Field Studies Council – Garden Bugs and Beasties

8. Paint a insect house and/or bird house to decorate your garden

We did this recently with our daughter, she painted the houses with bright colours, then we will vanish it to protect from the rain and put them outside.

We bought the Bird House and Insect House from Hobbycraft.co.uk and we used these Bright Paint pots as well.

9. Ask them to help you harvest the vegetables

This activity can be structured so that your plants don’t get ripped apart especially if they have their own pot, what is sown in it can be harvested easily. You can always have your own plants as a back up just in case they accidentally pull up all the plant when trying to harvest.

Pulling up the radishes was a great activity, our daughter got to touch the plant which is something new and then pull it out of the ground which was a novelty. As with children they want to do something over and over again, so it was handy we had lots of radishes to pull up.

It’s a good time to point out the root that comes out of the ground with the radish and how the radish plant takes up the nutrients from the soil. Also that plants need water and sunlight to survive.

When it comes to plants like peas to harvest, either hold the plant for them to pick the peas or pick the peas yourself and open them indoors for them to pick the peas out of the pods. Even if you harvest things like tomatoes, hand them to your child so they can put in a pot so you can collect them together.

Other posts

• Vegetable Growing with Children
• How to Sow Sunflower Seeds with Children