Planting a seed, watering and weeding, watching it grow, and finally eating the fruit of your labor is a fabulous lesson! Help your kids get enthused to plant a garden with these fun ideas!
Instant Radishes
Nothing spurs interest like success! Radishes grow so quickly—just 20 days until harvest—that kids can almost watch them growing. Even if radishes aren’t a favorite, it is worth the price of a seed packet to see such excited kids contributing to the dinner salad. Water them plenty and they won’t be hot.
My Growing Signature
Write your name gently with a nail on the side of a baby zucchini while it is still on the vine. Let it grow and your name will expand too!
Tiny Pumpkin Patch
Everybody wants miniature pumpkins to decorate with during October and November. They are easy and fun to grow and give lots of growth to enjoy! If you are short on space, plant them along a chain link fence and let them grow up. They make for a great kids’ business, selling them in the fall.
Grow a Playhouse
Every kid loves a hide-out! Grow yourself a a bean tepee: especially fun! Draw a circle in the dirt the size that you want for a tepee floor. Gather long poles, dowels, sticks, PVC pipes, 1×1″ lumber, bamboo poles, trimmed tree branches or any other supporting poles you can find. You’ll need six poles minimum. Use 6 foot poles if you want a one child secret space, and up to 10 foot poles for a bigger play space in your hideout.
Dig a little hole for the bottom of each pole along the circle on the ground. Leave a 2 foot opening for a entrance. Pull the poles together at the top and tie firmly with a rope or scrap of cloth, lashing in and out of the poles for extra strength. If you have fewer poles, you may way to tie a piece of twine (yarn, cloth, string, etc.) around the outside bottom of the poles, near the ground, encircling each pole with the twine, and leaving the entrance open. This bottom ring will create a bottom support for additional strings to be tied from top to bottom of the tepee between the poles providing more for the beans to grasp onto as they climb. Now, plant bean seeds all along the circle, every 2″. Plant scarlet runner beans in with your Blue Lake Pole Beans to give your tepee some colorful blossoms. You can even plant cucumber seeds or miniature pumpkin seeds to climb on the outside of your tepee. As the beans grow, you’ll have a shady retreat for Indian adventures that comes complete with an easy-to-pluck-and-eat healthy snack!
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