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 Establish a Garden Bed With Your Child that is Just For Your Child! One of the hardest parts about gardening with children is letting go of your perfect rows or plant spacing. By establishing a garden bed just for your child, you allow them their own space to experiment in, while you work on more delicate garden tasks.
Vegetables and Fruits kids will love to watch grow (and then eat!):
- Bush Beans: Magic! Most delicious when picked young.
- Pole Beans: Choose these for the bean pole tepee. Pole beans are great space savers and continuous producers when picked often. 'Blue Lake' and 'Kentucky Wonder' are classic varieties.
- Runner Beans: Easy to grow, these vines make great fence covers.
- Beets. Select either red or golden early varieties, 'Early Wonder' or 'Golden'. Tops and very early pickings are edible raw in salads or sauté as greens.
- Carrots: For early eating, choose 'Thumbelina', a bite-sized shorty carrot, perfect for containers or heavy soils and for anxious eaters.
- Greens: From mustards and collards to dandelion and purslane, greens in many varieties belong in all gardens. They are beautiful and good for you. And kids love them fresh from the garden.
- Lettuce: Loose-leaf varieties mature in about three to four weeks. Many varieties are sold in mixed packages called salad blends or mesclun mixes. They are perfect for kids' gardens, including containers.
- Onions: (bunching varieties or scallions) Sown as sets (tiny onions) or seeds, these bursts of flavor are easy for children to recognize, and even the tops, chopped into salads, are a taste treat.
- Peas: Snap and snow peas are fast-growing cool-season plants that are sweet treats right from the vine, and although they require about two months, they are interesting to watch grow.
- Peppers: Sweet or hot, peppers, like beans, are staples in most diets, grown for pizza or salsa gardens. Little gardeners enjoy watching the fruits develop and change color. 'Banana' and 'Jingle Bell' (a miniature) mature earlier than traditional bell varieties. Hot peppers are delicious, but children need to learn how to handle them, because of the capsicum tendency to "burn." Jalapeños are most familiar and fastest-ripening of most hot peppers.
- Pumpkins: (both tiny and large) Tiny pumpkins are a treat for kids of all ages. And they are not only cute but edible. Try 'Baby Boo' or 'Jack Be Little' varieties. When it comes to growing a jack-'o'-lantern-to-be, the "giant" varieties, if space allows, are terrific. Any size pumpkin, however, whether destined to become a pie or a magic lantern, is a great addition to a child's garden.
- Radishes: These tiny cool-weather jewels are best grown in early spring or late summer. They are sweetest when harvested young. Their fast-maturing habit makes them perfect for children who delight in pulling the perfect fruit from the earth.
- Spinach: Another cool-weather plant, grown early, it ripens shortly after leaf lettuce. Try the bolt-resistant varieties and enjoy fresh in salads or sauté with breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
- Strawberries: (June-bearing and everbearing varieties). If your child can grow only one fruit in your garden, make it strawberries. June bearers produce one large crop over two to three weeks early in summer. Everbearers produce smaller amounts throughout summer and fall. They're a great treat for children grown in containers or in the ground. Plants produce runners, which can be used to grow even more plants.
- Swiss chard: Actually a member of the beet family, Swiss chard provides dark green veggies between spinach harvests. Try the multicolored 'Bright Lights', which is beautiful to grow and delicious to eat, making it a favorite of kids. It's also good in containers.
- Tomatoes: Nothing beats the taste of the first ripe tomato grown in your own garden! For kids, the tine cherry, grape, and plum tomatoes are the most fun to grow, to eat, and to share. 'Early Cherry', 'Sweetie', and 'Golden Nugget' (all cherry); 'Yellow Pear', 'Jolly Elf', and 'Morning Light' (both grape) are terrific choices.
- Tomatillos: Salsa isn't salsa without tomatillos. These plants are delightful to grow and interesting to children as well as adults. They resemble tomatoes when growing.
- Zucchini: Zucchini and other summer squash are fun to grow, if your garden has space, because they grow so quickly. Squash is susceptible to numerous viruses and blights, however, and may not be ideal in some climates.
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