Vegetable gardening for kids

When the days are dark, cold, and dreary and cabin fever is at its worst, that is the per­fect time to start dream­ing and plan­ning your sum­mer veg­etable gar­den. Maybe you can intro­duce your child or grand­child to the joys of gar­den­ing this sum­mer. Amy Barr is the Delaware County 4-H & Youth Devel­op­ment Pro­gram Assis­tant. She encour­ages novices to start with a small gar­den. She says “it’s best to have a few rows ded­i­cated to each child, instead of a big gar­den. It is much eas­ier to plant the seeds or trans­plants than to weed and water the gar­den for the entire summer.”

If your fam­ily doesn’t already have a veg­etable gar­den, you need to pick a sunny loca­tion that prefer­ably is near a water sup­ply. To get the best results, it should be away from trees and shrubs that com­pete for mois­ture and nutri­ents, and it should get a min­i­mum of eight hours direct sun­light. If your soil con­tains clay, as much of Delaware County does, you will need to mix a few inches of organic mate­r­ial, such as com­post, manure, or peat moss into the soil.

What are the best veg­eta­bles for kids to grow? If they’re novices they should choose veg­eta­bles that are easy to grow AND they enjoy eat­ing. Mrs. Barr sug­gests plant­ing a row of pota­toes. Kids enjoy dig­ging up the pota­toes at the end of the sea­son. It’s like going on a trea­sure hunt. Also, pota­toes have a good rate of suc­cess. Your local gar­den cen­ter will typ­i­cally have a wide vari­ety of seed pota­toes to choose from. Other veg­eta­bles that gen­er­ally have high suc­cess rates are peas, leaf let­tuce, cherry toma­toes, and pump­kins. Small pump­kins are eas­ier to grow and take less space in the gar­den than the large-sized vari­eties. If space is an issue, kids can even start by grow­ing toma­toes in a container.

While many chil­dren and adults love to eat sweet corn, it is a poor choice for the novice gar­dener. It is dif­fi­cult to get a good crop, since rac­coons are an issue and you need to have sev­eral rows of plants for suc­cess­ful pollination.

Another con­sid­er­a­tion for the novice gar­dener is the length of time from plant­ing until har­vest. Two cool sea­son crops with high suc­cess rates and short matu­ri­ties that Mrs. Barr rec­om­mends are peas and leaf let­tuce. A rel­a­tively short time between plant­ing and har­vest­ing a crop is encour­ag­ing, par­tic­u­larly for the novice gardener.

Toma­toes are a pop­u­lar veg­etable. Cherry toma­toes are the eas­i­est to grow, and fun for kids to eat. They are typ­i­cally grown from trans­plants that can be pur­chased at your local gar­den cen­ter. Beef­steak and heir­loom toma­toes are vari­eties that require more skill and patience. Hence, they are more suit­able for an expe­ri­enced gar­dener. A key goal in gar­den­ing with young kids should be to pro­mote suc­cess by mak­ing sure it is not overwhelming.

The Delaware County Fair is held each year in Sep­tem­ber. For each of the last sev­eral years, about 100 4-H mem­bers have shown their veg­eta­bles at the fair. Veg­etable gar­den­ing is only one of the many projects that 4-H offers its mem­bers. Each exhibitor can show as many as 9 dif­fer­ent veg­etable vari­eties or as few as one vari­ety, such as a plate of five cherry toma­toes. The 4-H pro­gram encour­ages exhibitors of all lev­els to par­tic­i­pate in the fair.

To start a project, you can join a local 4-H club. Delaware County Exten­sion sup­ports about 75 4-H clubs involv­ing more than 1,000 youth. For infor­ma­tion about clubs near you, call the Exten­sion office at 740–833-2030. Each club has an advi­sor assigned to it, and clin­ics and field trips are offered through the club to help mem­bers learn about their projects. Clubs gen­er­ally start in Feb­ru­ary or March. Mem­bers gen­er­ally choose their projects around March and com­plete them by Delaware Fair time. A Pre­pare for the Fair Clinic, which gives young­sters point­ers on what the judges look for and how to best exhibit their pro­duce, will be offered early in the sea­son. This year’s date has not yet been announced. Once a child reaches third grade, they may par­tic­i­pate in gar­den­ing projects. 4-H offers a veg­etable project suit­able for novice grow­ers as well as inter­me­di­ate veg­etable and flower gar­den­ing projects that help more expe­ri­enced youth iden­tify pests and diseases.

Since the Delaware Fair is held late in the sea­son, it is impor­tant to grow warm weather veg­eta­bles, for exam­ple toma­toes and pump­kins, that typ­i­cally are still in prime con­di­tion in Sep­tem­ber. How­ever, if gar­den­ers have fin­ished har­vest­ing their veg­eta­bles before the fair date, there are a few cat­e­gories, such as dec­o­rated pump­kin and seed pic­ture that give them the option of prepar­ing an exhibit with­out grow­ing the crop.

Now’s the time to start. Encour­age a young­ster to grow a veg­etable gar­den as a mem­ber of 4-H and exhibit at the fair. We’ll look for you there!

Nancy F. Traub is an OSU Exten­sion Mas­ter Gar­dener volunteer.

Posted by Master Gardener on Feb 15 2013. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.