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Easy and Fun Plants to Introduce Kids to Gardening in SoCal
Written by Kelsey W.
For kids in Southern California, the lifestyle is often one spent outside at skate parks, swimming pools, and with friends. An excellent outdoor activity to add to that lifestyle is gardening, and kids of most ages will find enjoyment and excitement in helping grow a beautiful garden with the family.
One of the great features of gardening in Southern California is that it’s an activity that families can enjoy at any time of the year, which makes it a fantastic activity to engage in over the summer, during the winter holidays, or as an after-school activity.
Furthermore, introducing kids at an early age to gardening and growing plants can help them form an appreciation for the way our food gets to our tables, as well as give them some skills for later years when they might want to have their own backyard garden to enhance their family’s meals.
Let’s discuss some of the first plants you can introduce to your kids, and how to get them having fun with plants, step by step.
Give Kids Tasks Based on Their Age
Children are naturally curious, and at a certain point, you can start giving them small tasks to complete where they will feel accomplished as they help their older siblings, parents, or guardians. For the very young gardeners, simply holding a small watering can and giving the flower beds a drink is an excellent introduction to the world of plants.
For older kids who are ready and willing to dig around in the dirt, introducing them to the plant lifecycle and the needs of the plants as they grow can help you foster a lifelong love of planting, as well as create some fun and happy memories they will remember when they’re older.
There is no set age when a child is ready to start gardening. They may express an interest in helping you with gardening tasks, and you can take that as your cue to start including them in gardening projects. Alternatively, you can introduce them during summer break when you feel they’re ready.
A child of three or four years old can help with basic tasks, but children who are younger can even benefit from playing outside in the garden area while the guardians or parents are gardening. From kindergarten and beyond, most kids are ready to start learning about plants and their environment.
Vegetable Gardens are Great for Kids
One of the best kinds of plants to start with when you’re introducing kids to gardening is vegetables, particularly those that bear fruit and aren’t just leafy greens that grow a bunch of leaves like a regular bush.
Lettuce is easy to grow, but it isn’t nearly as exciting to clip off a leaf of lettuce as it is to see a little tomato growing on a bush or to pull a radish out of the ground when it’s ready. Not only are many vegetables incredibly easy to grow, but they often require nothing more than occasional watering, which is a super-easy activity for kids.
Here are some vegetables you might want to plant this year as you introduce your kids to gardening:
Cherry Tomatoes
As long as you water tomato plants, it’s almost impossible to mess up getting fruit unless your plants suffer an infestation or you ignore the plants for a month while you leave on vacation. Depending on the age of your child, you may need to assist in building a support structure for the tomatoes, but you can share this activity with older kids.
Bell Peppers
One of the most rewarding aspects of bell peppers is that they tend to grow to pretty impressive sizes as long as you let the plant grow to a sufficient size before allowing its flowers to turn into fruit. Kids will love getting to pluck a giant bell pepper off the plant, and it’s also fun to watch the peppers change color over time.
Carrots
If your gardening project will take place in the fall, one of the best vegetables is the carrot, which is easy for anyone to grow. One of the great features of carrots is that they don’t require a lot of room, so you can grow a whole big patch of carrots, which means surprise after surprise when you start pulling them from the ground as they ripen.
Radishes
For the impatient children in your life, an excellent vegetable to consider is the radish, which tends to grow quite quickly. Did you know it may only take a month and a half for a radish to go from seed to ripe for picking? If you have a child who is still learning the virtues of patience, the quickly growing radish might be the way to go.
Cucumbers
Another plant that grows swiftly is the cucumber, but it does need some space or a trellis on which to climb. If your child is able and old enough, you can build a trellis with them. There are some miniature varieties of cucumbers that tend to go over well with little hands.
Peas
Planting peas from seeds and getting them to the point where they’re ready to eat can take as few as 40 days, depending on the variety of peas you choose. One of the coolest features of peas is that they’re one of those vegetables you can pick off the plant and eat immediately without any need for chopping, cooking, or preparation. Kids will usually have loads of fun picking and immediately eating their harvest.
Flowering Plants for Childhood Gardening
If you’re not ready to devote your time to a vegetable garden, you still have many options for kid-friendly plants that either grow fast, grow easily, or offer big, rewarding blooms. One of the most notable options is the sunflower, which is a really durable plant that grows under almost any conditions.
If you’re a parent who feels they don’t have a strong green thumb, you’ll love how easy it is to grow sunflowers. Not only will the beautiful, big bloom impress the kids, but you won’t need to worry about accidentally killing the plant.
One of the best parts about sunflowers is that they’re actually easy to get them to grow – or germinate – from a seed. Some plants are a little tough to grow, and it’s easiest to just buy a little starter plant or seedling from your local garden center.
Not so with sunflowers. They’re super easy to grow from seeds in the ground, which ensures kids get to enjoy the whole growing process, from digging in the soil and adding the seeds to seeing the plant come out of the ground and eventually produce a flower.
Another cheerful flower that’s an excellent choice for childhood gardeners is the marigold, which produces beautiful blooms at a pretty good rate, especially when you fertilize the plants. Marigolds are annuals, too, which means you can introduce them as a summer project for the break from school and not worry about having to maintain them throughout the year if the child’s interest wanes for a time.
For a third flowering option, you might choose nasturtiums, which have two qualities that will appeal to kids. The first is that their seeds are quite hefty in size, which makes them easier to put in the ground than other plants that might have tiny seeds that can get lost when they’re dropped.
Another cool feature of nasturtiums is that their blooms are actually edible, which is a neat way to introduce kids to the concept of edible plants that don’t necessarily look like a traditional vegetable plant or fruit tree. Foraging is an incredibly fascinating hobby, and learning about edible flowers is an excellent way to start urban foraging.
Have Fun with Gardening with Help from Green Thumb Nursery
Whether you’re four, forty, or ninety-four, Green Thumb Nursery is here to help make gardening fun, educational, and rewarding. We’ll lend our expertise to your next gardening project, whether that’s introducing the kids to growing vegetables or creating a beautiful new bed of flowers. Drop by one of our Southern California garden centers today for more information about SoCal gardening projects and materials.
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