6 Tips to encourage children to grow their own food. 

On the face of it, I am sure most children- especially older children (I have a teen, trust me) will find the idea of gardening boring. Especially as it requires a lot of patience, hard work and often repetitive work. There are, however, some things we can do to encourage our children to spend time in the garden and start to gain knowledge and experience of growing their own food…

Quick germinating plants 

Now we all know that children aren’t always the most patient and unfortunately, growing anything takes time. That said, there are some quick growing plants that you can sow with your children that will definitely grow quick enough to keep your little ones attention.     

Some examples of quick growing plants: 

Radishes - With sprouts appearing in just a few days, Radishes are a great veggie to plant with your child. They’ll be ready to harvest within 25-30 days and with bright vibrant colours I’m sure these little veggies will bring a lot of excitement when it comes to harvesting. 

A little fact: Most of the ‘spicy’ flavour comes from the Radish skin, if you peel the radish you will loose most of this flavour, making the Radish potentially more palatable for younger taste buds.

Salad leaves - Name something better than fresh salad, forego the soggy salad bags from the super market and plant a patch of mixed salad leaves- not only do they grow quickly but it can become part of your evening routine heading down to your allotment to get some fresh salad for dinner. Something I’m sure our children will remember doing in years to come. To create a continuous supply of fresh salad, sow another pot each week for 4 weeks. Harvest your first pot after 21-30 days and whilst that is re-growing your next pots will be ready for harvesting. 

Cress - I am sure at some point we have all grown cress at school, maybe in an egg shell or on some cotton wool… Why? Because of how quickly it germinates. Cress can begin to germinate within just two days- perfect for any little ones who loose interest quickly. Another benefit to growing Cress is that you don’t have to have access to an outside space. Cress can be easily grown on a window sill in any type of container. You can sow Cress onto soil or alternatively you can sow it directly onto an absorbent material such as cotton wool or kitchen towel. Sow densely onto a damp surface and then cover with cling film or clear plastic to retain moisture. With in 5-7 days your Cress should be ready to harvest! 

Cress may be small but this little micro green boasts a variety of health benefits from Vitamins A, C and K whilst also containing Omega-3. It is also thought to aid in immunity, organ function, inflammation and several other health conditions. So a perfect healthy addition to our diets. 

Spinach - Much like salad leaves, Spinach is a nice quick and simple vegetable to grow and something you can keep growing to provide you with fresh leaves. Harvest a couple of handfuls to add to a pasta dish, add nutrients to a curry or simply to add an extra flavour to salad. Spinach is a really versatile vegetable with a host of health benefits - A great one to get your children involved in growing! Spinach is ready to harvest around 30 days from sowing. 

Having some responsibility 

Whilst children often love being outside naturally, getting them into gardening can require a little bit of thought to capture their imaginations. Providing children with some responsibility not only gives them a reason to participate but it also gives them a feeling of pride. 

Something we have found that worked well with our family is providing our children with their own size and age appropriate tools. Not only does this allow them to get involved, it also provides an opportunity to mimic adults using the same tools. Our son loves to rake the beds with us. You can see the concentration as he works out how to copy our movements. 

Whilst there are a range of gardening tools for children on the market, we decided to stick with the same brand that we use which is Kent and Stowe. Kent and Stowe do a wonderful children’s range made with high quality steel and ash wood handles. The tools have round edges giving peace of mind (please still use under adult supervision!) and are the perfect weight for younger children.They look just like the adult versions which is nice as little ones can feel just like the adults.

Another absolute must for us is a children’s watering can, whilst you may spend half of your time re-filling it, you’ll be amazed at just how much fun a child can have with the responsibility of watering the plants! It’s also a great opportunity to talk about the plants and identify characteristics of them with your child whilst they are also engaged with watering. Not to mention how heavy a full size watering can is when it’s full.

Growing competitions 

How many of us have had Sunflower growing competitions as children? If you haven’t then this is your sign to pop to the shop, pick up some sunflower seeds and get planting! An activity that the whole family can get involved with and a long running competition to entice your child into the garden to check the progress of their plant! For some added excitement, why not plant some giant sunflowers- we planted some last year and I’m honestly still shocked with the size of them. Google the Guinness world record for the tallest sunflower if you want some inspiration!

What’s better, once your sunflowers have finished growing, do not chuck them away. The sunflower heads make great natural bird feeders in your garden.

Another competition we love is to see how big a pumpkin we can grow. Again another long term competition that can encourage children to go outside to check progress. We grow one as big as we can and keep it aside to carve for Halloween, the remaining Pumpkins get turned into soup. This is by far one of our favourite things about Autumn. 

Finally, whilst is not a competition per say, having plenty of strawberry plants in your garden is another great way to get children involved. Maybe siblings can see who can find the largest strawberry, or who can fill a punnet to the top first. 

Activity sheets/ fact files 

This takes a bit of forethought and it's not necessarily for everyone, but on occasion we love to use activity sheets to add a bit of guided play/learning into our time outside. For example; if your child becomes easily bored on a walk, why not try providing them with a clipboard and a nature scavenger hunt sheet. Giving them a purpose on a walk and something to distract them can often lead to great adventures with significantly less moaning! (Please find a free Toddler - Pre school Scavenger hunt sheet and the bottom of the blog!) 

It’s also a great tool to guide learning whilst spending time outside. Growing Pumpkins? why not get your child to identify the leaves, draw them and start to build a fact file about different identifying characteristics of plants.

With younger children, why not set them the task to identify a different plant for each colour of the rainbow?

One of our goals with Nestie is to provide plenty of work sheets and free resources through our blogs, so please keep checking back if you are stuck for ideas!

Fun for when there’s no sun 

Now don’t get me wrong, there is plenty of enjoyment in prepping our allotment space for the coming seasons. What there isn’t however, is a lot of colour. Throughout the colder months we are often met with a lot of soggy mud and leafless trees. And whilst this lends itself to a lot of fun indoor nature crafts, such a bird feeders for the winter, there’s not always a lot of pull to be outside. 

One way we like to add some colour into our polytunnel (and some fun) is to use Loony character veg markers. While this may not work on older children, our youngest loves to put them out ahead of the coming growing season. 

A fun alternative to buying them is to create your own veg markers. A fun an easy way to do this is to use smooth faced stones. Children can get super creative as they paint the vegetables ready for next seasons planting. 

Little crafts like these are a great way to tie nature into your day when it’s too cold and wet to spend time outside. 

And Finally…

Get your children involved in cooking the food they have helped grow. 

I won’t delve too deeply into the shocking state of affairs when it comes to food/our government in this county. Nor will I bombard you with the facts about ultra processed food or my frustrations at food banks not accepting freshly grown produce (believe me… we tried).

However, I will say that now more than ever, generations are loosing what was once a common skill set, which is growing, storing and preparing fresh produce. Before I go any further, I’d like to clarify that we do still have ultra processed foods in our diet. And, we do still shop at supermarkets. I’m not trying to pretend that we spend all of our time cooking home made, fresh from the garden meals. It’s more about finding a balance. For us, its about improving on areas in a way that is sustainable for our family. Things that we can put in place for the long term and stick to.

We do however, strongly encourage our children to learn and understand where food comes from. We want them to have a real core understanding of how to create a healthy balanced diet and have regular access to good food despite what might be going on in the world or their own lives. 

For us, growing veg doesn’t stop at the garden gate. My son, who despite having a severe speech delay, can tell you that pumpkins need soil, sunlight and water to grow. He can explain how we chop them up and cook them to make pumpkin soup. He’s involved from the moment we sow those seeds, right up to sitting down to eat the literal fruits of his labour (and yes…pumpkins are fruits and not vegetables…). I believe it’s lessons like these that will stay with him for a lifetime. 

We’ve also found that children are much more inclined to try different foods if they have been involved in growing, harvesting and preparation of the meal. There is a sense of pride that replaces the “that looks gross, I don’t like vegetables” mindset. 

Making memories with our kids is super important to us but we know that cooking with children is not always the most stress free activity. I’m sure for some parents it’s the idea of hell. But I guarantee these are things your children will look back on once they are grown and they won’t remember the stress, they won’t remember the mess but they will remember the family time.

Keep your eyes peeled for a later blog in the summer about making jams and cordials. This is a annual activity for us and something that both we and the children really enjoy. It’s a great afternoon activity that involves the kids right from harvesting the berries, all the way to the finished product. As an added bonus, jams and spreads always make a sweet gift and is something a child could take real pride in giving, knowing it’s something they helped to make.

We would love to hear if you’ve tired any of the above tips, or maybe you have some really good tips yourself to share. Please leave us a message!

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