A Beginners Guide to Gardening with Kids + Free Printable Kids Garden Planner
If you’re looking for a fun and rewarding activity to do with your children, why not start a garden together? Gardening is a great way to teach kids about nature and where our food comes from. Plus, it’s a great opportunity to spend some quality time outdoors!
To get started, you’ll need to choose a spot for your garden. If you have a yard, that’s ideal. But you can also grow plants in containers on a balcony or patio. Once you’ve selected a location, it’s time to start planning what to grow.
If you are interested in a free printable garden planner, stick around to the end of this post, as there is a great kids garden planner you can download to help your little gardener keep their interest all season long.
If you live in a climate with warm summers and cool winters, you can grow almost anything! But if you live in a hot climate, you’ll need to choose plants that can tolerate the heat.
Once you’ve decided what to grow, it’s time to get your hands dirty! Gardening is a great way to teach kids about soil and how plants grow. Help them dig holes for their plants, and show them how to water and care for them.
Gardening can be a lot of work, but it’s also a lot of fun. With a little patience and care, you’ll soon have a thriving garden that your kids will enjoy for years to come.
Choosing Your Plants
When you’re planning your garden, it’s important to choose plants that will do well in your climate. If you live in a hot climate, opt for heat-tolerant plants like tomatoes, peppers, and eggplants. If you live in a cold climate, choose plants that can withstand the cold, like broccoli, cabbage, and kale.
You’ll also need to decide what kind of plants you want to grow. Do you want to grow vegetables, fruits, or flowers? Once you’ve decided, it’s time to choose your specific plants.
If you’re growing vegetables, some good options include tomatoes, peppers, carrots, and lettuce. If you’re growing fruits, you might want to try strawberries, blueberries, or watermelons. And if you’re growing flowers, some beautiful options include roses, daisies, and sunflowers.
Once you’ve selected your plants, it’s time to get started!
Seeds or Starter Plants
One of the first decisions you’ll need to make is whether to start with seeds or starter plants. Seeds are cheaper, but they do require a bit more work. Starter plants are more expensive, but they’re easier to care for.
If you choose to start with seeds, you’ll need to plant them in seed trays or pots and then care for them until they’re ready to be transplanted into your garden.
If you choose to start with starter plants, you can simply transplant them into your garden when you’re ready to get started.
The Right Tools for the Job
No matter which route you choose, you’ll need some supplies to get started. If you’re starting with seeds, you’ll need seed trays or pots, potting soil, and a watering can or spray bottle. If you’re starting with starter plants, you’ll need a shovel, trowel, and gardening gloves.
You might also want to purchase a hose if you don’t have one, as well as some mulch to help keep your plants healthy.
Once you have your supplies, it’s time to get started!
Planting Your Seeds
If you’re starting with seeds, the first step is to plant them in seed trays or pots filled with potting soil. Once your seeds are planted, water them well and place them in a warm, sunny spot.
Keep an eye on your seeds and water them regularly. In a few weeks, they should start to sprout. Once they’ve sprouted, you can transplant them into your garden.
Transplanting Your Starter Plants
If you’re starting with starter plants, the first step is to dig holes in your garden that are big enough to accommodate the roots of your plants. Once you’ve dug the holes, gently remove your plants from their pots and transplant them into the garden.
Water your plants well and place them in a warm, sunny spot.
Caring for Your Plants
Once your plants are in the ground, it’s important to water them regularly and give them plenty of sunlight. Water them in the morning so they have time to soak up the water before the sun gets too hot.
You might also want to fertilize your plants every few weeks to help them grow strong and healthy.
As your plants grow, you’ll need to thin them out so they have enough room to grow. Simply pull up some of the plants and throw them away.
Harvesting Your Plants
Once your plants are big and strong, it’s time to harvest them! For vegetables, this usually means picking the vegetables when they’re ripe. For fruits, it means picking the fruits when they’re ripe. And for flowers, it means cutting the stems and arranging them in a vase.
Once you’ve harvested your plants, it’s time to enjoy the fruits of your labor! Whether you’re eating fresh vegetables from your garden or arranging a beautiful bouquet of flowers, you’ll be glad you took the time to plant a garden.
Top Tips for Kids’ Gardens
Let Them Get Dirty
Kids need to get a feel for the earth, and they can’t do it if they are worried about getting in trouble. Let them get into it, and worry about the dirt later. Give them free reign to really experience every aspect of the job – from digging the holes to planting the seeds to watering the earth. Hose them down later if you must, but let them enjoy the job at hand without fear of repercussions.
You can also set aside specific gardening clothes and shoes so that they aren’t ruining their nicer clothing.
Give Them Space
Designate a portion of the garden that they alone are responsible for. It doesn’t have to be large, but if they have their own space, it gives them ownership and a sense of responsibility. When you go out to work on the garden, you can give them their own tasks for their portion, and they will see over time how their work affects how their garden grows and thrives. They will feel pride in their hard work, and they will learn lessons about how each action they take affects their long term results.
Let Them Choose Their Own Tools
Gardening tools are often very boring, as they are made for adults and are meant to be practical. But there are more modern varieties that are made to be fun and colorful, including many geared toward children. Take your kids to the gardening stores and let them choose their own tools so they may get excited each time they go out to the garden. It may seem a simple thing, but when you get to use your own special tools, it makes you a happier person with a happier attitude.
Choose High-Interest Plants
When it comes to kids, it’s all about instant gratification, so try and choose plants that will either grow quickly, early or magnificently. Cherry tomatoes are delicious and usually produce their fruit earlier than larger tomatoes. Radishes, peas and carrots can be planted in the spring, so can be harvested earlier than other plants. Leafy crops such as lettuce and spinach grow very quickly and can be harvested multiple times. Pumpkins take a long time but can keep a child’s interest as they watch it grow and grow in time for Halloween carving or Thanksgiving pie baking. For flower lovers, quick-blooming annuals like snapdragons, marigolds or petunias can bring great joy very quickly.
Practice Good Habits
Gardening success has a lot to do with keeping consistent habits, as much as it does luck and skill. Remember to teach your child how to clean their tools thoroughly after each use and to store them away until next time.
It is also important to teach them that maintenance of the garden is important – pulling weeds and watering the garden should be done regularly, and they should set aside 15 to 20 minutes once or twice a week to tend their garden. Organization is very important.
Free Printable Kids Garden Planner
While gardening itself is a great activity for the little ones, sometimes having a fun peripheral activity is a good idea. To that end, I’ve created this fun Kids Garden Planner to help your little gardeners get started on their journeys. It has some fun activities, including a garden scavenger hunt, some checklists, and a visual garden planner that can be changed up according to the whims of the child. They can decide how they want to lay out their plants in a grid, choosing which crops they want to grow and how they want to arrange them for the best results. You can help them out and teach them what they need to know as they go along.
Check out the pages here, then download the pdf by clicking on the large image below.
Hopefully you’ve found this guide helpful in teaching your little ones how to enjoy being outdoors in the garden with you. What are your best tips for getting kids started in the garden? I’d love to hear them!