Gardening with kids can either be spontaneous or planned. One day your child might be eating a pepper, tomato, apple, or orange and they’ll suddenly want to plant a seed they find. If this hasn’t happened yet, you just might want to have a flowerpot or two and some potting compost handy so that their enthusiasm of the moment can be obliged. Otherwise, garden planning is a good winter activity. However, unless your child has gardened before, you will be the one who has to take care of most of the planning. Now is a good time to start.
Maybe there is a patch of bare soil somewhere in your yard that you’d like to see brought to life. If not, you can start planning a raised bed, some pots for your deck, or a new garden bed where you currently have lawn. The important thing is for you to get excited yourself about this project. Your kids might not be very excited initially, but that should be OK as you are the one who wants to drive this, right? Children don’t typically have the attention span to plan and implement a garden, unless they are older and it was their idea, so you will need to have enough impetus to carry this through, leaving fun choices, like exactly which vegetable to plant, to the kids. The three first things to do are:
- Get hold of a couple of gardening books from your bookshelf or your local library. Books will help you to figure out things like: where to locate your new garden spot; how much compost you’ll need; and which tools to use. If you are not an avid gardener already try to keep the project manageable. Nature will throw enough challenges your way – you don’t need to create your own challenges by biting off more than you can chew! It’s surprising how much can be grown in a tiny space. My first vegetable patch for my daughter when she was a toddler was no more than about 3 foot square, yet we managed to get potatoes, carrots and lettuce to eat.
- Plan the space and figure out how to prepare the soil. As you research, write a list of everything you’ll need which you don’t currently have. Your list will include some of the following: containers, compost, tools, plants, seeds. With your list you can develop a budget. Be sure to figure out what USDA zone you are located in – when you look at plant and seed choices you will need to know this.
- Get hold of some good gardening catalogs. For seeds and plants I use The Territorial Seed Company. I love using catalogs because they allow me to plan my garden over the winter. Over the years I’ve received lots of catalogs. This one is my favorite. They have a wide choice of vegetable seeds and also sell onion plants, tomato plants, and potato tubers, which most seed companies don’t. I like being able to order everything from the one supplier. Every seed description has good information. They have organic seed choices and sell some heritage varieties. There is cultural information in the catalog and each variety is marked either F1 or open pollinated (important if you want to gather your own seeds for replanting). Here is an explanation of the open pollinated difference.
There’s lots more to write about this, but the above should be enough to get you started. Just make sure you get a catalog or two to sit back and browse. There’s nothing like colorful, juicy photos of fruit and veggies to get you excited about your garden plans! Of course you might prefer flowers, which is OK with me too 
Roots, shoots, buckets and boots at Amazon.com.
What Shall I Grow and The Secret Garden at my Usborne online store.
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