Growing Together: Gardening With a Toddler
By Michelle Levy Schulz
Gardening with your kids is a great experience to share. It’s fun, and children learn so much by doing. Beautiful and delicious plants are an added gift.
Last year we were lucky to escape the city for Covid quarantining. We built a wood framed raised garden bed in our backyard so I could garden with my toddler. A truck came filled with gorgeous rich soil and we had a tarp laid out in advance to catch it all. The tilting and the dumping was mesmerizing to my son Griffin. Equipped with shovels, buckets and a wheelbarrow we moved the dirt to the plot we had set up with the most sun. When I asked him what he liked the best, he said the pile of dirt.
Thich Nhat Hanh says in The Miracle of Mindfulness, “Every day we are engaged in a miracle…a blue sky, white clouds, green leaves, the black curious eyes of a child.” There is so much to witness and share growing plants together. Being in the garden with my son is one of my favorite things. The smell of earth is soothing, literally grounding. For him, it’s all about the dirt.
Choose a Garden Adventure: Let the Kids Pick What They Want to Grow
Planning what to grow is an adventure in and of itself. We research different plants, and draw out the possible garden plot arrangements on graph paper, which kids love. Plus, looking at winter seed catalogs together can spark the warmth of days to come. Seed catalogs are available online or you can get them free in the mail. After ordering your favorites, your kids can cut and paste the pictures into a garden collage.
I love looking through all the options with my son. We get to talk about what he would most like to eat, cucumbers, radishes? Edible flowers are an exciting option. The bright orange nasturtium blooms seem like a mystery. Having choices feels powerful for kids. Last summer we chose sugar snap peas. These are good because little ones can grasp the peas easily to help plant them in the soil. Kale and rainbow chard also have seeds that are more workable for small fingers.
In addition to the seed catalogs, we love browsing our local hardware store in Brooklyn for options. The store has a pig that is sometimes in the back garden and the beautiful parrot. We buy seedlings there because it’s nice to have something growing while we wait for the plants to come up.
Reading the instructions on the back of the packet aloud together once we are home with our prizes lets us all understand what to expect. I like to mark the calendar for how many days the seeds will rest before they sprout. We look forward to the day when we might start to see them pop up from the earth.
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A Little Dirt Doesn’t Hurt: Don’t Be Afraid to Get Dirty
In the city there are so many times when I say to him, “don’t touch anything.” Gardening is a chance to let that go. In our community garden Griffin would toddle around, inadvertently eating dirt along with the cherry tomatoes. I was worried, but my friend said, “kids need a pound of dirt a year.” Turns out allowing a “dirtier experience” to happen is good for growing immune systems.
A raised garden bed and purchased soil is good because some dirt, especially in the city, is not great for growing and can have lead. Laying down newspaper first minimizes grass and other weeds. Letting the little ones scoop the soil from the bag into the pots is messy for sure but so much fun for them. And starting small, with a container or a mini garden box, is just as rewarding as having a full-sized garden.
The sugar snap peas needed trellising, and that was fun to make together. Our trellis looked a little funny but it worked. I explained to him how the trellis gently encourages the tendrils of curling sprouts to climb up. Practicing different kinds of knots and creating a makeshift trellis out of sticks and string was a bonus group effort. Using our hands, getting dirty, and coming up with solutions together is wonderful for building a child’s inner resourcefulness and it lets them experience the feeling of being on the same team.
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Owning the Yum: Eating What You Plant
Eating veggies right from the garden lets kids try more than they would have. They get to be independent and adventurous. Dragon’s tongue beans are Griffin’s favorite. An heirloom seed whose pods bloom with a purply red. They are a bush bean variety and they don’t need stakes or a trellis. Usually a radish is a harder sell, but pulling them from the ground himself is convincing and rewarding for him.
Basil, dill and cilantro are fun, too. A sunny windowsill can go a long way for sprouting seeds and growing herbs. I love having fresh herbs on hand for bright dishes. Your little ones can help by using their scissors to cut the stems and add the leaves to the meal.
Even though Griffin says he doesn’t like them now, when he was shorter than the cherry tomato plant he picked and ate them himself. He loved watching the butterfly that just passed through, and we wondered together how the bloom of the plant becomes fruit. Being together in the garden gives us both bonding time, and yet there is freedom side by side. Watching my kid find the sugar snap pea that is ripe for the picking and promptly eating from the garden we planted together is so gratifying. He helped the vegetables grow and learned to love them in the process. In our garden we get to grow together.
Michelle Levy Schulz is a poet and writer living in Brooklyn working on a memoir. Her poetry has been published in The Spoon River Poetry Review and recently in Brick Street Poetry’s Reflections on Little Eagle Creek. Anytime possible she is happy to garden and grow.
