Eco-Fun for Kids: Grow Your Veggies and Eat it Too!

Engaging kids in the organic gardening from an early age has many benefits: it teaches them about nature, sustainability, environment, patience, to appreciate food, etc.  When they are older, gardening will become second nature to them.  By doing it themselves and watching the plants grow, kids learn faster than any other way.  Above all, gardening with kids is heaps of  fun.

Our garden isn’t really big.  We gave up more than half of it to our chickens and started container gardening.  Kids love it because it is more accessible than our veggie patch.  Two most exciting moments for them are when the plants sprout from the seeds and harvest.  From my experience, children are more likely to eat veggies they’ve grown (see the pictures and comments below).

Last weekend we pulled the last beetroot: time to eat cool weather veggies that are remaining and make space for summer crop:

Our chickens got the leaves (young leaves can be tossed into salad) and we had a simple yet very delicious salad of grated fresh beetroot, carrot and Granny Smith apple only seasoned with a bit of lemon juice.  Colourful and yum!

We’ve planted a few sprouting spuds a couple months ago and here we’ve dug up the most delicious new potatoes.  I boiled them and the kids ate them all before they could make it to the plates!

Beautiful pink colour!

Snow peas are also ready for harvest.  I was surprised how quickly they grow.  While picking,  our daughter ate a few raw.  After a brisk boil,  they’ve been eaten in a minute, our son declaring them as delicious!  He wasn’t keen to try snow peas before 🙂

Whether you have a huge garden or a few pots on the window sill, get your kids into growing their own plants.  It’s a fun activity, gets the kids outside and let them be responsible for what they’ve planted, from watering to harvest!