Fun Activities That Will Get Your Kids into Vegetable Gardening.
People all around the world enjoy the hobby of gardening. It is a great way to relieve stress from your daily life, as well as grow nutritious food for your family. Once you get involved in vegetable gardening, it is easy to see why so many people enjoy it. However, it can be difficult to convince people to start this hobby. Your children, for instance, might be reluctant to share your hobby. There are ways that you can show your children the fun of getting into vegetable gardening! Read on if you are interested in finding out how!
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Decorate Your Garden and Yard
Your children will be more eager to step foot in the vegetable garden if they know that they helped you decorate the area. This way, it will make it seem as though they played a big part in the garden. They will be more willing to help out if they understand that they have a stake in its growth. You can do things such as add bird baths and bird feeders. This is a good way to attract birds to your garden for your children to enjoy. Another thing that you can do is add lighting to your garden. Path lights can be added to the pathways to illuminate your plants at night. Tree lights can also be strung from the branches up above your head. These twinkling lights can make the whole area seem beautiful and more magical. Your children will appreciate this, and they will be glad to follow you out into the vegetable garden!
Get a Butterfly Feeder
Butterflies are occasional visitors to gardens, but they make the whole area look brighter and more beautiful! Your children might be more willing to venture out into the garden if there are butterflies for them to admire. You can attract butterflies to your garden by hanging up a can and adding colorful leaves or flowers. Butterflies are attracted to colors, and they will be more likely to make an appearance if you do this. Another way to coax butterflies to your garden is by planting certain kinds of plants. Monarch butterflies, for example, drink the nectar of milkweeds. If you wish to see lots of monarch butterflies, plant milkweed all over your garden. If you are interested in attracting diverse types of butterflies, do a bit of research online. You will be able to see your favorite butterflies soon!
Keep a Plant Journal
Children enjoy keeping track of slight changes that they notice. If you start keeping a plant journal with them, you and they can enjoy marking down the changes that you notice. When the plant is fully grown, you can show them the difference that they did. You can explain to them that their hard work resulted in the growth of a small seed. Vegetable plants are great examples to show them this, because they can actually eat their bounty when it is grown. If you or your children are artistic, you can actually track these changes by doing drawings of them. The small differences, such as changes in leaves and stems can be very exciting for your child to notice and measure.
Make Delicious Foods with Your Crops
Once you get your kids into vegetable gardening, you can keep them engaged by learning how to make yummy foods with their hard work. Tomatoes and peppers can be used for things like homemade salsa, cucumbers can become pickles, and use whatever you please to whip up fresh tasty salads. Not only does this keep them active and a part of the gardening processes, but it also helps to promote healthy eating choices, providing them with essential vitamins fresh from the garden with zero chemicals or pesticides.
Conclusion
Children can sometimes be stubborn, and unwilling to join in with your hobbies. This can be a shame, because they are missing out on the chance to bond with you doing an activity. Vegetable gardening is a great hobby, and you can even eat the results of your work. Sharing your love of gardening with your children can be accomplished if you put a little bit of effort into it. By getting a butterfly feeder, keeping a plant journal and decorating the yard, you are making the whole hobby seem more interesting to them.
They will be happy to join in, because they can see the extra effort that you are putting in place for them to enjoy. It will be worth the extra time and resources, if in the end you are able to share your love of vegetable gardening with your children. Eventually, they may even pass this love down to their own children, your grandchildren.