Gardening with Children

Gardening with small children is possible, but comes with extra considerations. Some recommendations:

• Write down your personal and family gardening goals so that you can remember them when something doesn't work as planned.

• Try new crops and techniques together. Browse the seed catalog or seed library (in the Azusa City Library, or ask your local librarian) with your children. Purple beans! Pink celery! Striped tomatoes! Giant sunflowers! Tiny bok choy! We've found that peas, green beans, and all sorts of broccoli are generally popular with the preschool population. We've also observed many children who will gladly forage greens in the garden but won't touch them on a plate.

• Define spaces that are OK for digging and foraging. Locate a sandbox or digging spot near, but not in, the garden. Consider moving particularly toxic or precious plants to a different part of the yard. Some pollinator hosts, like sages, sunflowers, and bee balm, are fully edible. Others are mildly toxic if consumed in large quantities, and a few common ornamentals are quite toxic in small quantities.

• Use trellises, plant supports, and netting to protect vulnerable crops. A tomato cage around just-transplanted or just-emerging plants can be a good defense against accidental stepping, sitting, or crawling. Bird or insect netting around ripening fruits protects against pecking and foraging.

• Teach skills early and often to let your children participate as much as they are capable. Toddlers can do all of the steps of planting large seeds like beans and squashes - poking a hole with a stick, putting the seed in the hole, and "pat, pat, pat" the soil. Toddlers and preschoolers are also your best helpers to find and pick low beans and berries. Preschoolers and elementary-aged kids can do almost everything in the garden with coaching, except handling sharp or heavy tools or certain chemicals.

• Learn together. Visit the library (the Azusa City Library has a nice selection of gardening resources for all ages) or take a class together (check out free offerings from the Azusa City Library or Youth & Family Center).

• Join a gardening community together. The APU Community Garden and Azusa Youth & Family Center jointly host All Ages and High School Garden Clubs.

• Check the security of your tool and chemical storage spaces, and be diligent about safe tool handling.

• Save some projects for later. Growing your favorite dry bush beans with a toddler foraging the green beans may be better left for a few years down the road. The breeding project that relies on impeccable labeling may be much easier once your children can write labels, rather than mix them up.