How to keep children interested in veggies and the edible garden

How about a pizza garden?

Saturday, December 14, 2024

A proven way to get the young ones interested in eating their veggies is for them to grow them!  Nowadays, children are used to instant gratification so plant things that grow quickly and they can harvest from daily.  You can also have them grow the veggies for one of their favorite foods like pizza.  Engage them in choosing their favorite pizza ingredients and grow a garden with those in them.   

It is amazing how many children will swear they don’t like a vegetable until it is in their backyard!  Have them help you plant the seeds, monitor the seedlings, water, and harvest.  You will likely catch them picking green tomatoes to sample because they are so excited about eating what they have helped grow.

To get and keep young ones interested in the garden, whether in pots or the ground, plant things that grow quickly and/or produce over a long time that can be harvested daily.  Here are some ideas for each season that can be grown in pots or the ground.

Early Spring and Fall

Radishes are the quickest to harvest, especially the small ones.  Plant a variety of sizes and days to harvest at the same time and keep the harvest going for weeks.  Radishes less than 3" grow great in pots or the garden bed.

Carrots take a little longer to come to maturity than radishes.  A common gardening practice is to plant both at the same time.  As radishes are finishing up, carrots are ready to eat.  Like radishes, the smaller ones mature quicker.  Choose varieties like Little Finger (4” long), Adelaide (the size of your pinky), Short n Sweet (4”), Thumbelina (1-1.5” diameter), Parmex (1.2-2” diameter), Tonda di Parigi (1.5-2” diameter).  Plant a variety of sizes to keep the harvest going.  Smaller carrots do great in pots or the garden bed.

Leaf lettuce can be harvested in 30 days as baby lettuce leaves for the salad.  After the plants have a few leaves on them, harvest the outside leaves only and let the inner leaves continue to grow.  You can pick lettuce leaves this way for weeks.  Plant lettuce seeds every 2-3 weeks to keep your family in lettuce all year long.  I grow most of my lettuce in pots and some in the garden bed.

Herbs are something that can be harvested year round.  Have them harvest the herbs you are using for your meal that day.  Many herbs are perennials that only have to be planted once like thyme, oregano, and chives.  I grow herbs in pots and the garden bed.

Bunching or walking onions can be harvested year round, too, and are perennials.  You can use the bulb for cooking and the greens for chives.  Walking onions are fun and interesting with their topset bulbs.  The can help you pull the in ground bulbs for using in the kitchen and help you plant the topsets to keep the family in onions year round.  I grow walking onions in pots and the garden bed.

Late Spring, after last frost

Smaller peppers produce much quicker and more continuously than larger peppers.  Many hot peppers like cayenne produce continuously all summer.  Sweet peppers like banana peppers that are smaller do the same.  You can start pepper seeds indoors or buy pepper plants to speed up when you can start harvesting.  Buy 3 plants and let them harvest 1 a day to be able to harvest for months.  My pepper plants do better in pots than the garden bed.

Cherry tomatoes are prolific and are the quickest to be ready to harvest of all tomatoes.  Cherry tomatoes are ripe almost a month before the bigger tomatoes.  Again, you can start your seeds indoors or buy transplants to be able to harvest sooner.  Cherry tomatoes will produce until a hard freeze.  Dwarf tomatoes can be grown in medium sized pots.  Indeterminate tomatoes can be grown in extra large pots.  You'll get the most tomatoes when grown in the ground.

Try a themed garden, too, to keep them interested.  A pizza garden or spaghetti garden are a couple of ideas.  You can even throw a few other healthy ingredients in the mix as everything tastes better when you grow it yourself, like spinach, sprouting broccoli and peas.

So, what are some ideas for pizza or spaghetti ingredients?  

*Tomatoes-any you can’t eat, you can easily freeze for winter pizzas Compact tomatoes for small spaces and pots

*Basil, oregano, chives, garlic for seasoning  Start a kitchen herb garden!

*Onions-you can grow Egyptian walking onions in a pot and they are perennials to boot  Egyptian walking onions

*Spinach, kale, arugula, sprouting broccoli and peas for spring and fall pizza toppings (also easy to freeze for later)  Growing fabulous lettuce and greens  How to grow broccoli and cauliflower  Time to plant peas!

*Green peppers, eggplant, zucchini for summer pizzas (maybe some hot peppers for the adults) 

Peppers are for every taste and garden   Eggplant-add this native from India to your garden 

Growing zucchini and summer squash 

All of these are easy to grow in a small space and the basic ingredients in an Italian garden.  

Grow a Sicilian/Italian kitchen garden in as little as 6' x 6'

For those that are real adventuresome, you can get mushroom kits to grow mushrooms indoors.

If you are just starting your garden adventure, try these tips.  Easy kitchen garden

You can tell them stories of where the heirloom they are planting came from.  Share the history of Victory Gardens in past war efforts.  How we can actually grow our own food just in yards across the U.S. if we wanted or needed to.

Little ones bring such wonder and joy in the garden.  They will check out every bee and butterfly, every worm and centipede.  And will want to taste everything they helped to plant and water!  It is a wonderful learning experience for the child to see where food comes actually from and helps the adult re-see the world through a child's eyes.