Skip to main content

Organic Edible Gardening With Kids

Teach Kids to Grow Vegetables and Herbs Without Chemicals

Composting

You can start an organic garden with your child any time of year by composting. Playing in the dirt is elementally satisfying to children, so give them children’s garden tools to help you hack away at your mound, introducing oxygen and hastening the breakdown of your scraps.

If you live in an apartment, consider a small vermiculture station in the kitchen where red wiggler worms turn vegetable scraps into rich garden soil. Red worms appreciate paper bedding, so the child can shred old homework and tests to get the bin started.

 

 

Seed Starting

The smallest toddler can get in on the gardening game when you start a flat of vegetable seeds at home. If a child is dexterous enough to pick up oat cereal circles, he can grasp a bean and drop it into the soil. Arm your child with a watering can whose rose delivers a very fine spray, so he doesn’t dislodge the seeds with his exuberance.

Deter damping off by following the spacing directions on the seed package. If you’re dealing with smaller seeds, combine them with sand in a salt shaker. As the child “seasons” the soil with the shaker, he’ll deliver just the right amount of seeds per square foot.

 

 

Miniature Vegetables

If your child wrinkles his nose at the sight of vegetables on his dinner plate, perhaps you aren’t appealing to his reduced sense of scale. Pair ‘Tom Thumb’ lettuce with ‘Spoon’ tomatoes in a container, and he can harvest a salad that serves one. If carrots aren’t normally on your menu, pique your child’s interest with the ‘Thumbelina’ variety, which resembles an orange golf ball at maturity. Use floating row covers to protect your Lilliputian veggies from flea beetles and weevils.

 

 

Edible Flowers

Kids love it when you turn the notion of what’s edible and what’s ornamental in the garden on its head. Although few children enjoy the peppery petals of nasturtium blossoms, you can set a very special table for a tea party with candied violets or scented geraniums sprinkled atop cupcakes.

If you’re overrun with zucchini, help a child to snip the large yellow flowers that seem to turn into green giants overnight. They’re delicious stuffed with meat, rice, or cream cheese and fried lightly. Conduct your harvest early in the morning, so the child can help you handpick squash bugs that feed on sap. Place cardboard squares at the base of each plant, and foil the speedy insects when they run for cover under the squares by dropping the squares in a bucket of soapy water.

 

 

Pizza Garden

Salsa gardens are a popular gardening trend among grown-ups, but a pizza garden will have your kids checking the plot daily. You can plant tomatoes, bell peppers, garlic, basil, oregano, and onion for traditional pizza toppings. However, today’s pizza chefs don’t limit themselves to conventional ingredients, so expand your pizza garden to include eggplant, broccoli, or spinach.

Rotate the location of your pizza garden each year, as tomatoes, eggplant, and peppers are all members of the nightshade family. You reduce the possibility of foliar blight striking your plants when you move them to a different quadrant of the organic garden every season.

The post Organic Edible Gardening With Kids appeared first on Downtown Homestead.



from Downtown Homestead http://downtownhomestead.com/organic-edible-gardening-kids/
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Fragrant Winter Shrubs: Perfuming Your Garden: Slideshow

Although sweet floral fragrances are usually associated with spring and summer flowering plants, there are a goodly number of shrubs, bulbs and bedding plants that   perfume   the air all through winter.   Fragrant Winter Plants Fragrant Winter Shrubs Best known of all winter fragrant shrubs is probably Daphne Odora – the flowers may be pink or white – the foliage dark green or green with a silver edge. It should be planted in a semi-shaded area along with another excellent shrub, Sarrococca, which has spicy, small white blooms and glossy pointed leaves – a plant of neat growth habit. Fragrant viburnums are a mid-winter favorite – nurserymen will have a selection of varieties. The Fragrance of lemon blossoms is most delightful in a winter garden – as is that of other citrus. For many months honeysuckle provides a favorite scent and holds great allure for hummingbirds. For a camera buff, what a picture with a humming bird drawing nectar from a garden flower. Insofar a...
Post a Comment
Read more

Air Condition Your Garden

July, it is the time of the year when air conditioning is as important in the garden as it is in the home. You, as the temperature rises, can cool off with an electric fan, a cool drink or by hiding away in a cool spot. Your plants are not quite that lucky; yet certain gardening techniques can be employed to help your plants through the summer months. The benefits of air conditioning in your garden will show up in the form of increased production, greater resistance to disease and pests and, in general, a more attractive vista. An improper over-heated environment during the warmer months often leads to wilt, dropping of buds and yellowing of foliage. Aeration of the soil is concerned with its exposure to the air. If this is lacking then your plants very likely will suffer this summer. Believe it or not but there are millions of tiny spaces between the soil particles and this is where air resides. Soils that become water-logged force out this air, a condition that leads to souring of ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Advantages to Community Gardening: With limited gardening space, consider a community garden.

You might live in a townhouse with a postage stamp-sized yard. Perhaps you live in an apartment building without a balcony or access to green space. Perhaps you have a large yard, but it is completely shaded by large trees, or the soil in your yard is not hospitable to growing edible plants such as tomatoes, herbs and peppers. If this is the case, a community garden plot may be just the solution. Advantages of Community Gardening Good Soil and Sun Exposure Community gardening allows individuals and families to cultivate plants and grow food when otherwise they may not be able to due to conditions at their own home. Many community gardens are located in areas with mostly sunny exposure, perfect for growing vegetables and many varieties of perennial and annual flowers. Tools and Storage are Shared Many community gardens are equipped with garden tools such as shovels, rakes, wheelbarrows, buckets and watering cans, all of which are available for members of the garden to use. Member g...
Post a Comment
Read more