I’ve always loved growing fruit and vegetables but the truth is I don’t have the time or energy to do as much as I’d like. Last year after visiting my dad’s vegetable patch my son decided he’d like to try and grow some fruit himself and obviously I was keen to let him – what parent doesn’t want to encourage their kids to enjoy more fruit and vegetables! We have a small garden, most of which is grassed over so a lot of our fruit and vegetables have to be grown in containers, plus they also have to be simple things that won’t lose the attention of my four year old or me! With that in mind I thought I’d share some easy plants to grow with kids, some of which we’ve already managed to grow and some of which are on our wish list for this year!
Green sprout image via Shutterstock
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Easy Plants to Grow with Kids
- Strawberries – these are a massive favourite and a testament to the fact that you can easily grow fruit and vegetables yourselves with very little gardening skills! We planted three strawberry plants last year and my son loved watering them and picking off the ripe strawberries. I didn’t even get one! To get my son excited about gardening I got him a little gardening kit similar to this one (which looks super cute!)
I also found that it was much easier to encourage him to water his own plants when he had a kids watering can.
- Cress – neither of my kids will eat cress but growing cress heads is a classic childhood activity and a great way to get kids started in growing plants as they can see the results so quickly. We love these ones from Red Ted Art.
- Tomatoes – tomatoes are easy to grow and kids enjoy watching them change colour, much easier to help small people work out when something is ripe! Cherry tomatoes are great for kids ass their smaller size means they will ripen quicker.
- Sunflowers – another childhood classic, we spent last year peeping at our neighbours sunflowers over the wall and this year are determined to grow some ourselves!
- Peas – this is my son’s big choice for this year! My dad has a massive allotment and last year my boy had great fun ‘stealing’ all the peas straight from the plant to eat. As the mother of a fussy eater I am 100% behind this kind of behaviour.
- Butterfly Seed Mix – not a singular plant as such but seed mixes can be easily scattered by kids and left to see what grows without too much effort. Plus anything that gets more butterflies into your garden has to be welcomed.
- Chantenay Carrots – carrots aren’t always the first choice in choosing plants to grow with kids, not least because carrot flies are pretty gross. This year we’re going to try and grow Chantenay carrots, as they’re smaller size means that they can be grown in containers, hopefully also meaning they’ll be less time involved for anything to go wrong!
- Herbs – herbs are great plants to grow with kids if you don’t have much space in your garden, you can easily grow them in pots on a sunny windowsill and they’re great for kids to smell and try the taste of. Plus you get something new to spice up your meals!
Plant image via Shutterstock
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Nice list. We finally got sunflowers to come up last year and it was so much fun. Squirrels and birds were stopping us other years by digging up our seeds! Strawberries sound like a great thing to try, we will have to put that on our list.
Ah, nothing makes me happier than gardening with the sproglets! Gotta add courgettes and beans to the list too: the seeds are satisfyingly huge and therefore easy for them to stick into the soil themselves, plus they do their first bit of growth in quite an impressive woah-head-rearing way that is pleasing to watch. And then they grow really, really fast after that, so you can practically see a new couple of cms every day. Plus, they’re both fairly good at taking care of themselves. You have to miss *a lot* of watering opportunities to kill these off, so you mostly are going to get at least few fruits at the end of it… (I am capable of missing many watering opportunities and killing delicate plants in a matter of days, so this is a serious plus for me, ha ha…)
Thanks for a great list! I’m going to pass it on to my daughter. She loves to plant things with the kids.
We have done most of those on the list, but strawberry and carrots. Maybe should try strawberry this year.
This is a great list! This is my first year gardening with the kids and so far, we’ve got strawberries, sugar snap peas, and some herbs. In a week or two were going to add tomatoes.
I think there is something so great about kid’s seeing first hand where their food comes from! We live in the city, so we don’t have room to plant much but have been able to put in some tomatoes, peppers, zuchinni and hot peppers. Our kids especially enjoyed watching the tomatoes and hot peppers because they produced well and often.
This is a great list! I can’t wait to get our garden ready. I’ve never planted strawberries or sunflowers but this year I’m thinking I will try!
I love the plant suggestions. I don’t have kids yet, but I do have a newbie green thumb. I have just planted a few of these on your list. Let’s hope that I can be half as good of a gardener as your kids are! Thanks for sharing!
Nice list! We haven’t tried Cress before — I’ll need to look into that. We do love herbs – our basil grows like wildfire here 🙂 And we’ve had amazing results with cucumbers too (which is a bonus since they are my daughter’s favorite for salads). Happy garden season!
Thanks for this Kate. I’m pinning it for tips for our new garden. I was pottering around today and found rhubarb in the flower beds so we’ve obviously got good soil for veg! x
What a great list. My boys are VERY into gardening so I am trying to find some plants and flowers just for them. Pinning!
Great list. My daughter planted strawberries a couple of years ago that are doing so well and she’s proud of them. She planted some sunflowers a fortnight ago and is so excited to see them shooting up now!
we love growing sunflower! It does not require much care and it grow really very tall and strong! Great lists!
Sunflowers are my favourite! They look amazing and always make me smile! Strawberries are always a winner too and taste great! x
Seeing strawberries on the list makes me so excited. My 2 year old is absolutely OBSESSED with them, and it would be such a fascinating experience to introduce him to gardening by growing something he loves! We will definitely be doing a sunflower one day, because I had one as a kid and looooved it! Thanks for sharing <3