GARDENING with KIDS 🌻 The 5 BEST Plants to Grow with Children

Hi, I'm Valerie, and welcome back to NowGardening, where today I'm going to talk about gardening with kids. More specifically, five plants that you can grow with children that will inspire their curiosity and fuel their passion for gardening. And be sure to stay tuned until the end of the video when I will share a tip for how to make gardening fun for children of all ages. First, let me explain the criteria that I use to decide which plants to choose for my top five. Let me start by saying that I have four kids and two grandkids, so I have a little bit of experience when it comes to the kid department. First and foremost, and now this is really important, is to choose plants that children like to eat. At number two, in order to keep kids excited about this, I chose plants that have an interesting life cycle. Now if a plant is just getting bigger, but not really much else is happening on the plant, kids tend to lose interest pretty quickly. My third criteria is that I choose plants that have a little bit of mystery about them, and I'll talk more about that as we go through the list. The fourth criteria that I looked at is, and I'll start by saying this, some of my fondest childhood memories involve walking barefoot in a freshly plowed field, along with my dad and my brother planting seeds. My not-so-favorite memories involve harvesting a ton of itchy squash in the steaming Alabama heat. So my fourth criteria I looked at are plants that are fun to harvest. Now most people will tell you to cater to a kid's short attention span by planting plants that have a short seed-to-harvest time period, but I don't particularly subscribe to this idea because I have rarely seen kids that are interested in eating lettuce or spinach or herbs. So I'll tell you how to work around a kid's impatience as we go through our list. You might wonder why some plants are not on my list. Tomatoes and cucumbers, for example, which tend to be a kid's favorite, and that's because I decided to stay away from plants that are overly fussy and need staking, for example, or plants that are overly susceptible to diseases that can wipe out an entire crop. We want our children's first gardening experiences to be successful ones. It's much easier to handle disappointment or loss later on once you have a few wins under your belt. Now let's get onto the list. At number five, and working backwards, we have bush beans. Now I love bush beans for a number of reasons when it comes to growing a crop with kids, and I'll tell you why. Bush beans germinate fast, in about a week. Also, their growing cycle is about 60 days max from seed to harvest. Kids love seeing the little baby beans coming out where the flower was before. And the bushiness of the plant actually gives it kind of a hide-and-seek feel when it comes to harvesting them. And from my experience, even the pickiest kid doesn't mind snacking on a green bean straight off the vine. Now number four might come as a surprise because carrots are notorious for their long growing cycle. However, this doesn't have to be a showstopper. Kids love eating carrots, and carrots that are growing quietly under the ground always have a little bit of mystery to them. So what I do to work around the long growing time is I plant enough carrots so about a month after I see the first carrot tops, I can start harvesting about one every two weeks. And you'll see kids die laughing when they see the little tiny baby carrots first starting to grow. And then they get more and more excited as week by week, or two weeks by two weeks, they start seeing the carrots getting bigger and bigger. Another fun game is to guess as you're going along by looking at the carrot top which carrots will be the biggest. Now before I go on to number three, if this video has been helpful so far, would you please click on the like button down below. This will help other new growers or growers who are looking to start gardens with their children find this video. Thank you. At number three, and no list would be complete without this all time kid favorite, is strawberries. Strawberries are easy to grow and kids love to eat them. Plus, hunting out the ripe strawberries on the vine provides entertainment for children of all ages, but especially for our littlest gardeners. Now number two is a two for one special, but I explain the pros and cons as I go along. This is blueberries and raspberries. And I listed both of them because both of them will provide some berries in the first year. However, some kids really like one berry and do not like the other berry. I have this in my own family. One kid likes only blueberries and the other one likes only raspberries. That said, raspberry canes will need to be planned for. You'll need to plan a raspberry patch because raspberry canes spread over time. And if you plant them without any planning ahead, they will not only come back, they can actually become invasive over time. Blueberries on the other hand have the advantage that you can buy a blueberry bush and you can pop it in a pot and it stays nice and tidy and you can decide at a later time if you want to actually put it out into your garden. Both of these berries have a very interesting life cycle and children love seeing how the flowers slowly transform into berries that they can eat over time. And now for number one and my personal favorite for growing with children and that is potatoes. Remember the criteria that I listed at the beginning of this video? Well potatoes have it all. They have the fun, they have the mystery, they have the yummy eating at the end. And who wasn't fascinated with the eyes growing on potatoes when they were children? From cutting and planting the chitted potatoes all the way through to the Easter egg hunt like harvest, potatoes are just a huge hit with children of all ages. It is true with potatoes that you need about three plus months for them to become full size. However, you do have options. You can grow potatoes as new potatoes which can be harvested in a much shorter time and the other option is that, especially for children that are a little bit older, I would say seven and up, you can also use it as a science experiment where you can plant extra potatoes that you can dig up along the way and see the development of them. Both kids and adults alike are fascinated to see how the potato grows. And now for the tip that I promised at the beginning of the video on how to get kids of all ages to have fun in the garden. And the key here is to engage them at their level. For a three-year-old, for example, it might be a color game. Let's look for the red strawberries. For a seven-year-old, on the other hand, it might be a game to see how many vegetables he can identify in the garden. Or it might be to see if he's strong enough to pull a carrot up. And for older children, I'd say maybe eleven and up, it could be to have their first raised bed design and crop layout. It can be really interesting for children of that age to start to sense their own independence and also to feel empowered in a spot of the garden that's their own. The idea overall is to keep kids of all levels engaged both intellectually as well as physically in order to ignite their wonder in the garden. So I hope this video has helped you identify some good ideas for gardening with kids. Have a great week, and I hope to see you back next time. Thank you. Bye.