Immy loves our vegetable garden. I am not sure if I can call it a vegetable ‘garden’ as it is really vegetables planted all around the regular garden. You see, we are currently renting a home and so we have had to plant our vegetables in spaces in the existing garden beds (between the existing plants) and in large pots. This does mean that we are kind of limited in what we plant space wise, and so we have stuck to vegetables that we use alot – broccoli, cauliflower, zucchini, capsicum and cherry tomatoes and an assortment of the more common herbs. We are lucky that there were also a couple of lemon trees already in the garden.
Our first broccoli ready to harvest.I have previously recommended planting vegetables as a useful strategy for interesting and encouraging toddler eating. Immy loves it when I suggest each day that we go outside to check our vegies. She comes with me to inspect each plant scattered around the garden, helps me pull out weeds, we check for snails and slugs and caterpillars (all of which have plagued us at various times).
And she loves to water with the watering can…
So my challenge to you is to plant a vegetable with your child this weekend. Take a trip to a local nursery and choose a seedling (or two) to plant together. Nurture it, watch it grow, learn together.
Leave a comment below to let me know what you are planting at your house.
Read more of Christie's adventures at http://childhood101.com.
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Your broc looks great. Our kids love their veggie garden and you are so right about it encouraging healthy eating. Our daughter has been regularly snacking on raw spinach out of the garden lately. We were lucky enough to get some nice weather on Saturday so we did a bit of a clean up and planted some carrots and brussels sprouts.
We're doing the same at our place. Renting too, and we inherited a lemon, a mandarin and an orange tree.
We don't have lots of sun coming into our backyard and we're not great gardeners either, but we've still managed to get some broccoli, beetroot, cabbages, carrots, rocket, thyme, parsley, basil, sage and coriander out of it.
It's so satisfying to list them like that! And it's definitely satisfying for the whole family involved in growing and eating the fruits of our (sporatic) labour.
Thank you for your comments, we ae adding baby spinach to our list of things to grow next. Along with strawberries, not that I think they will last long on the plant before Immy steals them!
Christie