Make Gardening a Family Event
Show them how much you enjoy gardening. Spend time in your garden. It is especially easy to stimulate a child's interests when they see you having fun.
Make gardening easy. Don't expect a perfect garden. Allow your family to work at their own pace and within their attention spans and age range, especially children.
Dig it! Kids love to dig. This is a great way to teach the basics while letting them play and just have fun.
Let them play an active role in planning. Take your children to the local nursery and let them pick seeds or transplants to start their garden. Take your time and let them browse and enjoy all of the beautiful plants.
Grow a theme garden. This is a great way to let your children use their imagination and express their creativity. The sky is the limit. Some great ideas are gardens that coincide with the holidays, alphabet gardens, a garden themed in their favorite colors, a sensory garden where you can experience different smells, tastes, textures and sights, or a "Freedom Garden".
Give children their own "kid sized" tools. They don't have to be expensive. You can go with an old spoon and a bucket that you have around the house or you can venture down to the garden center and purchase garden tools made for children's hands.
Give them a space to call their own. It doesn't have to be big. This will teach them ownership and responsibility, and your children will be able to take credit for their own little space.
Get crafty! Press or dry flowers to make a beautiful arrangement, make potpourri, or make a pomander ball. Children love making things and will be amazed at the crafts and gifts that they can make from the garden.
Grow a vegetable garden. Your children will be amazed that they can grow their own food. Be sure to use organic pesticides.
Use gardening to brush up your children's math and science skills. Let them count the seeds they are planting, or teach them how plants are living things. Not only will you capture their attention, you will be polishing their skills as you go.
Have a contest. Kids love to be rewarded. Be sure to give each child a reward; the biggest tomato, the prettiest flower, or perhaps the best tasting herbs (a little Spray-N-Grow will help!)
Don't try to do it all! Pick a few of these tips that you know are best for your family and have fun with them. After all, gardening is meant to be fun and easy. And with a little help, something the whole family can enjoy.
About the Author
Several plants in my garden will not grow, mainly my pepper plants.. any suggestions?
I am trying my hand at my first garden, all but 3 plants will grow.. my 2 pepper plants and a cantalope plant.. they were planted over 6 weeks ago and they are just the same size.. please help.. any ideas of products.. my tomatoes are booming.. my zuchinni and cucumber plants are thriving.. why not peppers!
Keep your soil warm and moist and mulch them. I use shredded cardboard around my peppers and they are doing very well this year.
Peppers are slow growers at first. My tomatoes always overtake the peppers this time of year.
Cantalopes are finicky, too. They like direct sun as long as it's around 85F and not much higher. If peppers or cantalopes experience hotter temps they tend to "lie low" and wait for more ideal growing weather.
If the plants are in the shade, try to move them to sunnier locations.
Also, use a fertilzer rich in nitrogen to get the growth started: blood meal and bone meal are great. You can also use coffee grounds around the plants, egg shells, banana peels.
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