A row of radishes, a few lettuces and a strawberry plant are enough to turn a corner of the garden into a family project, complete with hand-drawn labels. Growing food together feeds the household, teaches children where produce comes from — and works only if they are involved from the very start.
Having your own vegetable patch is far from being old-fashioned. Actually, there’s nothing more trendy at the moment! More and more families try to set aside a small patch in their garden to grow radishes, lettuce, tomatoes, string beans, strawberries or raspberries. What triggers this? Strong motivations and desires: control where produce comes from to benefit from healthier food, lower the food budget, follow the do-it-yourself trend and the hope to share moments with the upcoming generation.
The vegetable patch is the exact opposite of televisions, pads and all the other screens that isolate family members from each other. Growing gathers people together!
Whatever the age, something is always within reach. The vegetable patch becomes a place for togetherness. Not only are you spending time with your children and producing something together, you’re also teaching them a bit of what Mother Nature can offer!
However, for the goals to be met, it mustn’t become a chore for your children to follow you to the garden for frustrating boring activities like weeding, watering and harvesting. Involve them from the start of the adventure!
Once you have decided which fast-growing crops go into the plot, it helps to pick named varieties that are quick, forgiving and fun to handle. All of the following are widely sold in garden centres and seed catalogues.
| Variety | Crop | Sow | Why it suits children |
|---|---|---|---|
| ‘Cherry Belle’ | Radish | Early spring to late summer | Round scarlet roots that sit near the surface, easy to spot |
| ‘French Breakfast’ | Radish | Early spring to late summer | Long red-and-white roots, pullable within weeks of sowing |
| ‘Little Gem’ | Lettuce | Mid-spring to midsummer | Small crisp hearts, one per child, ready quickly |
| ‘Scarlet Emperor’ | Runner bean | Late spring | Big seeds easy for small fingers, scarlet flowers up a wigwam |
| ‘Gardener’s Delight’ | Tomato | Late winter to early spring, under cover | Long trusses of sweet cherry fruit picked and eaten on the spot |
| ‘Tom Thumb’ | Lettuce | Early spring to late summer | Heads the size of a tennis ball, perfect child-sized harvest |
| ‘Sungold’ | Tomato | Late winter to early spring, under cover | Exceptionally sweet orange fruit that converts reluctant eaters |
| ‘Chantenay Red Cored 2’ | Carrot | Mid-spring to early summer | Short stumpy roots that lift easily from shallow soil |
A good way to involve your children is to draw your future vegetable patch up and decide what you want to plant in it together.
Smart tip: at the beginning, choose plants that grow fast such as radish, lettuce, bean, carrot and spinach.
And what if they don’t like “green things”? If you’re lucky, this might change once they have the chance to taste their very own harvest.
After having designed the vegetable patch, work together to prepare the soil. There, too, you can ease the work for them by finding a sturdy gardening kit that matches their age and size. Today, in almost every gardening store, you can find child-size watering cans, spades, hand hoes, planters that are specifically designed for easy handling.
Then the nicest part comes around… time to plant! It really gets down to earth for your kids.
For everything to get even more real, craft labels with them that describe the name of the plant or include a drawing of it, and add the date of planting and how often it needs to be watered. That way, in the following days, they’ll be equipped to take on a little initiative of their own and decide when to water their vegetable patch themselves.
After some time comes the harvest season: the culmination of all the work they’ve provided! Encourage them to pull a radish out every now and then to taste their harvest… No spurring needed for strawberries, though!
And if you and your children are willing to go a step further, you can even cook and bake together with the fruit of their garden plot. Why not for a meal to which you’ll have invited family and friends over? The pride they’ll show when the dinner bell rings will be a priceless memory!
