Gardening With Children

If you love to garden, and you have young ones interested too, why not let them start from the ground up, buying their own seeds, germinating them indoors, and then moving them to the garden outside?

Gardening together can be great family fun, plus, it can offer children the chance to “make” something on their own, and learn about good gardening and environmental practices, all at the same time.

For starting plants indoors, choose a seed that is relatively easy to plant for small fingers, which will produce a seedling that is amenable to transplanting by unskilled hands. One of the good choices are marigold seeds, because they come as a long, stick-like seed that offers more to grip and push into the soil. Marigolds also come in a variety of colors ranging from yellow to orange combinations, and single-petaled or multiple layers.

You can purchase seedling trays and covers at a garden center, or the children can do a little recycling to kick off their garden venture. If you have ever bought rolls, cake, or salads at a deli, they often come in low, clear plastic “boxes” with a top and bottom. Save a few of these over the winter and you’ll be ready for Spring planting!

Take the box, and punch a double line of holes along the length of the bottom. If it’s a fairly wide box, make that three rows. Use a hot nail, or other sharp object. This should be done by parents of young children, or by older children who are supervised. Be careful making your holes, as this clear, hard plastic is sometimes brittle, and in attempting to poke a hole, you can cause a crack or tear across the bottom. If it’s not too large, it can still be used. But a large one will give way under the weight of wet soil.

Place your seed box on a tray to catch water that runs out the bottom. The foam trays that meat comes on at the grocery store are great for this. Just wash them carefully so they are bacteria free.

Get a bag of suitable potting mixture for seedlings, and fill the box to at least a 2” depth. Wet it thoroughly, but not so it is soggy. How you plant the seeds can depend on the age of the gardener, and the yield you are hoping for. In a 6” x 9” box or flat, spacing rows and seeds 1 ½” apart, you can get 18 single seedlings. Older children might want to try planting two or three seeds in one spot, and when they are large enough, plucking out or snipping off the weaker, thinner stalk.

Close the lid on the box and place the tray in a sunny window, where the box will also stay relatively warm at night. While seedlings in a greenhouse environment will grow faster due to having consistent heat round the clock, it’s still possible for children to start their own plants indoors and have them ready for setting out when the frost is past.

Condensation will show on the inside of the lid, which means you have lots of moisture in the soil, and the heat is doing its work, warming up the dirt for the seeds to germinate. Once they have broken through the soil, it is important to keep an eye on how wet the soil is, and how hot it is where the box is sitting. In a very warm window, once the seedlings are up, you may want to prop the box open during the hottest hours of the day. But do check to make sure the tender seedlings are not wilting in the sun. If they are, move them away until the sun has gone down a bit. Be sure to close the lid again, so the heat and moisture return to keep the plants growing. Once they have reached a height of two inches, if the location of the tray is reasonably warm at night, you can remove the top of the box, and leave the plants to reach for the sun. Without the condensation from the lid, you’ll need to water the seedlings to keep them healthy. This can either be done with a long, narrow-necked watering pot, or by heavily misting the plants at their base with a spritzer bottle.

Once the seedlings are fairly sturdy, at six weeks or so, they can be transplanted to small, bio-degradable individual pots, and set on a larger foam tray, to await the warm weather outdoors. This will eliminate their roots being disturbed again, and increase the chances of survival for your children’s new crop of flowers!