Children can grow vegetables too

Gardening with children can be the most rewarding feeling you will ever know. The curiosity, the mess the pure innocent fun isn’t what gardening is all about but it sure helps. Gardening especially with our children teaches them so much more then you think, having your child garden with you can build character, help a child be more patient and will give them a real sense of where our food comes from and they will appreciate the hard work that comes with it.

In many urban areas it can be hard to have a garden perhaps your space is small or you don’t have even a balcony. Well I bet you have a window and that’s all you need, well that and some dirt, seeds, water and TLC. Starting a garden with your child can be as simple as planting some old potatoes or a few bean seeds. Often we forget how important it is for our kids to eat healthy and more often or not they won’t eat healthy foods anyway, but most kids will eat something they have grown… well they will at least try it.

Depending on your living situation and living income start small, even if you have to grow seeds in a half litre pop bottles lining a sunlit window. Food is what we need to live and grow and the importance of knowing where your food comes from is a lesson our children need to learn. Sustainable living comes in many forms, and if you can grow something healthy and natural then everyone can and if everyone can the world would be a lot healthier and happier, and we’d all have more money in our pockets.

Tomatoes, lettuce, beans, herbs edible flowers like pansies, green onions, these are all easy to grow in almost any area. I use to know a lady who filled her window boxes with pansies and different varieties of lettuce, it looked so pretty and when it was all done she’d make a huge salad including the flowers, of course it helped she had fresh tomatoes that she grew in her other window box. Just remember you can grow lots of stuff in a small space, the essentials are sun, water, loose soil… the recipe for life, literally.

Keep life simple and learn and teach to enjoy the small things, when your child picks fresh beans of his/her bean plant and munches it down you’ll know you’ve started them on a great healthy path