How to Teach Your Child to Garden

Today's youth are armchair bound couch potatoes and computer game addicts.
They spend more time with their cyberspace friends than local neighborhood children or their peers from school.
Obesity and lifestyle diseases such as Diabetes Type II are rapidly increasing social concerns that afflict many young people the world over. It is important that we engage our children in outdoor activities to prevent their childhood being restricted to housebound entertainment.

We need when our children are young, to expose them to outdoor activities such as gardening.
Not only will they enjoy gardening as children; they will have learned a valuable life skill that will stand them in good stead for the rest of their lives.

As with any activity, you need to introduce gardening in such a way that it is simple, easy to understand and enjoyable.
You could start small with kitchen windowsill garden.
Simply place the top end of a bunch of celery in water and watch as the roots begin to sprout.

Make sure your child sees you using the celery in salads and soups and explain the cost-effectiveness of growing perpetual celery and not having to buy it from the local supermarket. Remember to change the water in which the celery is growing every second week.
Sliced off carrot tops with the greenery left intact also grow into interesting windowsill decorations.
Potatoes which have begun to sprout can be placed in a pot and tended to until they begin to grow.
Once the baby potatoes are ready for harvesting, make sure you cook them immediately in lots of butter and salt and serve them as a delicious mid-afternoon snack to your child.
Tomatoes too are a real bonus for a beginner gardener. Simply squash a cherry tomato or two between two pieces of newsprint and leave it to dry for a few days. Then "plant" the newspaper (seeds and all) and encourage and remind your child to keep the soil damp.
Within a week or two, small tomato plants will appear. Show your child how to prick out the seeds. Keep one pot indoors in the kitchen for easy salad pickings and plant the others outdoors, provided it is spring or summer and there are no threats from frost or snow.

Fall back on the tried and tested methods from your childhood and place beans in wet cotton wool to germinate. Once the leaves have appeared, plant the beans either indoors in a pot or in a small section of the garden which gets morning sun.

Have fun making stakes for the beans as they grow taller. Even better than beans eaten straight off the bush, is the delight of shelling and eating new peas as you explore your garden. Peas are incredibly easy to grow.

You can purchase the seeds and stagger your plantings to ensure that you enjoy fresh peas for a few months at a stretch in season.

Other very easy herbs and vegetables can be planted for the sheer joy of watching them grow; followed by the immense pleasure of serving organically grown produce from your own garden.

Celery, chives, oregano, rosemary, lentils, lettuce, spinach, mint and carrots grow very easily and in spite of the fiddling of a child gardener.
If you find that your crops are growing too large to harvest for your family's needs, you can encourage your child to sell his herbs and vegetables, as seedlings or as harvested bunches to the neighbors or family members.

Children love water and another method to keep your child interested in his own little garden would be to provide a small water feature or bird bath nearby.
Even a large basin submerged in the ground under a tap with pebbles lining the bottom of the basin can look attractive. Encourage moss, water cress, parsley and other plants which like to have wet feet to grow around your little pond; if it is located in a shady spot. Once your child is having fun outdoors gardening, you can introduce flowering plants too.

Nasturtiums grow very easily and the flowers make a good and attractive, addition to a summer salad. Marigolds too grow "like weeds" and have the added advantage of discouraging a number of pests from visiting your vegetable patch.To maintain your child's interest in gardening, make sure that time in the garden becomes a dedicated quality time spent with mom or dad. Purchase small gardening tools and gloves for your child's very own gardening basket. Should your child's interest in gardening start to grow and develop; start experimenting in the garden with the germination of various fruit seeds and pips.

Don't throw away your peach pips for example, encourage your child to push them into the soil a few centimeters deep and keep them watered.
Imagine his joy when a peach tree germinates ( and they do germinate very easily).

Start scouting around other people's gardens for plants which will grow easily from slips and cuttings.

Engage in simple science experiments in your kitchen to expose your child to the joys of botany. Place a white flower in a vase with red or blue food coloring and watch as the flower changes color a little more each day.
Place small delicate plants inside recycled plastic bottles to create a miniature terrarium and watch the water droplets form as the plants "breathe".
These simple experiments will gently expose your child to the wonders of science while you engage her in a new hobby which she can pursue for the rest of her life.

If you find that you and your child share a common interest in gardening, then you should invest in a very cheap and, if necessary, home- made worm "farm".

Instead of throwing away your kitchen peelings and organic waste, let your child "feed" the worms.
Make sure that you use the "worm tea" as a natural fertilizer in your garden.
An excess of "worm wee" can be sold to neighbors who are keen gardeners, to make some extra money to spend on new seeds, seedlings and plants.

Share the pleasures of being outdoors with your child.

If it is too hot to physically work in the garden, spread out a picnic blanket, pop a few mint leaves from your herb garden into freshly squeezed lemonade and sit under an umbrella and enjoy a picnic lunch with your child while you watch your garden grow.