HOW TO....... create a vegetable garden with children

Not only is gardening with children fun, it also helps to address a number of issues such as obesity, lack of exercise and exposure to nature, to name just a few.

Gardening is also a great way to get children interested about where food comes from and, as they are more likely to eat produce that they have grown, eat more healthily.

This book will demonstrate how you can involve children in the garden as well as how to re-use and re-purpose unwanted and discarded equipment.

Jay and Bri then gave it a good scrub.

The children were puzzled when I arrived home with an old barbecue I had found, but were excited when I explained that we were going to create a fruit and vegetable garden. First Bri removed the lid from the barbecue with a battery operated drill.

The lid was turned upside down then placed on the supporting cross bars below, to make another level.

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Next the children placed a layer of slate in the bottom of each tray to ensure good drainage.

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After that they filled both trays with soil.

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Now the fun part - the planting!

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I had taken the children to the garden centre to choose the food they wanted to grow. Bri loves strawberries and Jay loves tomatoes so they went in the basket, along with a range of lettuce leaves for me! I also bought cucumber and sweet pepper as they hadn't grown these before and I particularly love the look of the growing cucumbers.

You can of course grow all these from seed but I wanted something that would grow, and could be harvested, quite quickly to keep the children engaged. If I had more space I would have combined plug plants with seeds so that they could see the the process from the beginning.

A few weeks later, the children are amazed at how the mini cucumbers have grown.

A few weeks later and we have an abundance of salad leaves which are harvested daily, by the children, to go with our dinner! The children water the plants every night and check on the growth of the peppers and cucumber. The strawberries are well on their way but we are still waiting for the tomatoes to make an appearance.

There is not a huge amount of maintenance required, after planting, other than watering regularly and enriching the soil occasionally with plant feed - just follow the instructions on the bottle. You will also need to ensure that you support the plants as they grow by staking them.

Have a look at my Pinterest page for many more cheap and easy ideas for gardening with kids.

https://www.pinterest.co.uk/jackie3466/

Jackie Slaughter

www.earlyyearsoutdoorlearning.com