How to Make Gardening a Family Project
Gardening offers so many benefits. It can provide extra food on the table, offer healthy foods, and it can be an enjoyable hobby, too. While it can be a great activity for one person, it can also be a great way to connect as a family. When your family participates in gardening, it eases the many tasks that one person has to prepare and care for a garden. It will give your family time to encourage each other, offer appreciation, and share the excitement. The perfect setting without the intervention of electronics.
It’s simple to get your whole family to participate in setting up and keeping a worthwhile garden. Your spouse and children can assist in taking care of the garden as a family unit- with everyone working alongside each other. You can also split up sections of your garden into different areas and change it up with your family members so that each person spends time helping another person in your family.
Gardening isn’t just a hobby. You can gain a lot of things through gardening, including independence. When you get the whole family involved in the process of growing their own fruits and vegetables, you’ll be teaching them many useful things that can serve as an advantage to them now and into adulthood.
When gardening as a family, everyone will learn which fruits and vegetables are the finest to grow in the spring and summer, and which ones are best grown in the fall. You can teach about planting zones and how to decide which produce grows best in your area.
Why Gardening Is Good for the Household
They will learn how weather affects plants. Teach them by letting them water the plants, how sunshine helps plants to grow, and what bugs are attracted to certain plants. This information may interest teens as well as younger kids. Your family can gain information on more than just benefits from plants for food. You can learn other purposes of plants. For example, some of them have been used in history to care for specific health problems. The basil you may be growing can help treat headaches. Inform them that the lavender they see can help provide tranquility and pacify them after a stressful day and that it’s a great sleep aid!
Once you begin working with your family to plant and care for a garden, allow them to learn which fruits and vegetables go best with certain dishes and which ones they will be more likely to eat. Don’t plant something you’ll never eat. Gardening is also a great way to try new foods that you might like. If you’re a beginner gardener, grow fruits and vegetables that require less work. Some examples are beets, carrots, cucumbers, snap peas, and blackberries.
Once you’ve gained gardening experience, don’t be afraid to experiment with different fruits and vegetables. Give your garden a mix to create a color assortment. Encourage others in your family to choose what they would like to plant in the garden. Teens and younger kids will love having this choice. Gardening will teach your kids to become self-confident when they learn to grow a vegetable or fruit on their own. You will see your children become more responsible as they take care of the plants by watering and weeding them to help the garden grow. Let your family members each be liable for their own fruits and vegetables. Weeding the garden is probably the least favorite activity, but it needs to be done. By switching up the chores, it gives everyone a welcomed break from that activity.
Give kids room to learn and look up the care that different species of plants need. Gardening is perfect for communication between you and the rest of your family. If you have older kids and teenagers, you know it can be hard sometimes to communicate with them. Gardening is an excellent escape from modern technology such as cell phones and television. Being outdoors is great for everyone’s health, and it promotes happiness. The little bit of time spent together in the family garden can be welcome to the kids, especially if both parents work outside the home.
Getting the Kids Involved
Most kids can be a bear to get to pitch in around the house or work outside. Gardening is a great way to change that. Let the whole family take part from start to finish. If you’re starting a garden from nothing, having your family members pick out a spot for the garden is a good idea. Kids love the sense of feeling needed and a garden will get them excited at the thought of planting. Discuss with your kids when you’re picking out most of the fruits and vegetables to grow and make them part of the process.
While you may choose something more practical, a vegetable or a fruit that the kids pick out may get them to eat it. Younger kids love a variety of plants. Some kids will tend to pick brightly colored fruits and vegetables, regardless of whether they will eat them or not. Bell peppers are perfect for small children because they’re a simple vegetable to grow. Radishes are easy to grow and are radiant. Snow peas are another great crop to plant in your family garden with the kids. Both radishes and snow peas grow during the cool seasons. Kids are apt to enjoy fruits more than vegetables, so planting strawberries, raspberries, and blueberries are fantastic choices. Others may like getting fruits and vegetables that are not common that they aren’t used to seeing daily.
If you have small children, start them out with their own plot and supervise and teach them as your entire garden progresses. As they get older, their levels of knowledge will lead to becoming more responsible
Gardening as a family should be fun and not overwhelming for all involved. If they suggest some decorations for the garden, try to accommodate their ideas that will fit within your garden budget. You might want to be prepared for this, as kids enjoy bright colors and inanimate objects. Give them room to learn as they go. If their minds wander off into play while they are in the garden, that’s okay! Imagination in all aspects of life is important!
When it comes time to harvest your fruits and vegetables, your children can assist you in food preparation, such as canning or freezing. This gives them a look at the big picture, from beginning to end. They will have a sense of pride and accomplishment, and you will have the pride of knowing that you taught them how to be self-sufficient.
Pingback: Three Varieties of Gardens You Can Grow to Battle Stress ⋆ Life as Rog