Say you have a sunny corner of your yard or a few containers in your driveway, and lots of family time on your hands. Growing a vegetable garden is a fun and very satisfying activity to do with kids. It can even convince picky eaters to give veggies a try.
Once you’ve prepared the ground or container, here are some satisfying, kid-friendly crops for beginners to try planting in March. All are fairly easy and reliable. Just keep them watered (the spring rain isn’t always frequent or reliable enough) and follow the directions.
Radishes
Grow from: Seed
Radishes are colorful and crisp, and they grow really quickly. Several varieties take only 24 days from planting the seed to giving you a new crop to try. It may not be most children’s-first choice in a snack, but having had the new pleasure of growing the crop, they might try it.
Tip: Don’t forget to thin the young plants to the full amount recommended on the seed packet.
Radishes are grown from seed. (Image: iStock)
Spinach
Grow from: Seed
Spinach is one of those crops that tastes more delicious when grown yourself. Sowing the seeds in the ground and covering each with a quarter-inch of soil is an absorbing way to develop dexterity.
Tip: Don’t wait too long to harvest. Once the flowers form on the plants, they’ll turn from little bushes of succulent goodness to tall stringy things that don’t taste much. It’s better to make your salads too early rather than too late.
Spinach is grown from seed. (Image: iStock)
Peas
Grow from: Seed or starts
With peas, I like to make my own starts, germinating them indoors in pots before sowing them outside. When choosing peas, you have options to consider.
First, there’s the growth habit: You can choose bush plants that grow unsupported to a certain height and don’t require a lot of tending. Or you can choose climbing peas that grow long vines that send out tendrils to grip netting or whatever structure you put up for them to climb. The climbing pea is more work, but you have the satisfaction of having a small seed turn into a really big plant. I prefer them.
The other thing to think about is whether you want to be able to eat the pod. Freshly grown snap peas make an irresistible snack for children. Don’t be surprised if you don’t get much to eat for yourself because your kids have been too busy picking pods directly from the plants and eating them. You could also grow shelling peas. The task of popping open the shells so the peas come out is a fun chore to do with a child: simple, repetitive, and social. I can’t decide which kind of pea I like more, so I grow both.
Peas can be grown from Grow from seed or starts. (Image: iStock)
Green Onions
Grow from: Seed
They take about 75 days to grow, and they’re tasty. Plus, you can keep planting them throughout the summer, so you always have green onions on hand.
Green onions are grown from seed. (Image: iStock)
Strawberries
Grow from: Bare root bundles or starts
If my son had his say, strawberries would be all I would grow in the garden. There is nothing like the taste of a fresh, garden-grown strawberry. When choosing, you have to decide between everbearing plants that give fruit throughout the summer or June-bearing plants that give a big crop in June.
Tip: There’s a little bit of delayed gratification here because the second year’s crop of these perennial plants is usually better than the first. Remember to keep the plants watered through the summer drought and thin them over the winter.
Strawberries are grown from bare root bundles or starts. (Image: iStock)
Fiona Cohen, the author of “The Curious Kids Nature Guide,” finds gardening very soothing during times of stress. She may have gone a little overboard with the planting lately.
