It is important to teach your kids valuable skills and qualities at a young age so they grow up to be successful adults. Learning these qualities starts at home. Creating a garden is a great activity to do as a family that will teach your kids hard work and responsibility. The following are a few tips to help guide you in the right direction.
Try to Start Small
Even if you don’t know a lot about gardening, you can take small steps to begin a garden with your family. Learning feels good, but it can also make some people want to take on more than they can handle. There is a difference between doing something versus just learning about it. You will want to start small so that you can test your knowledge. You would be surprised how much you need to learn as you and your family begin gardening. Be patient because gardening can take some time to get used to. Once you feel comfortable with the work, you can move on to bigger gardening tasks.
Teach About Composting
It is easy to just get compost that is already done for you, but with gardening, there’s always a little more you can learn. This is an idea you should pass down to your kids as they start gardening. A good way to maintain the health of your garden is to feed it good compost, and you could teach your kids all about it right now. Compost takes some time to make, but it also uses up a lot of the biodegradable garbage that most folks throw away in their trash can. You’ll be teaching your kids to care for their garden and how to help you reduce the carbon footprint in your household. You can either purchase a composting bin, or you can just have your kids learn to do it in the backyard. All you need is a hole or a bin and foodstuff that’s ready to go through the process.
Consider the Purpose
You need to talk to those who will be helping you grow this garden. What you want to do is find out the purpose of this garden. It might not seem like such a big deal, but purpose could help motivate you and others. A garden can be time consuming, and that can get tedious after a while. Some folks choose to beautify their homes with their gardens. If this is the case, you should consider the position of each plant. Talk to a landscaper if you want. Those who want to grow edible plants have harvesting time to look forward to, depending on what you grow on your farm. Growing edible foods should help you save money as well due to a lower grocery bill. Keep in mind that your family garden can start with something like a mushroom growing kit or similar.
Embrace the Ugly
The next thing you have to do is learn how to embrace the ugly. This is something you and your kids can learn. Your garden won’t look pretty for time and won’t have much in it. In the beginning, you’ll probably see some growth, but you won’t see any cool patterns yet. This part might be challenging, especially for kids. You don’t want them losing interest early on in the process. Do your best to ensure you make things exciting for them while they wait. Maybe teach them about the stages of growth that the plants are going through. There are videos and other tools you can use to show them what’s happening even if they can’t see it.
Get the Right Tools
Be sure to get your kids the tools they need to do the job. Taking this step might not seem necessary since you probably already have the tools. You can always let your kids borrow your tools from time to time, so why waste the money? The reason you’re doing this is because your kids should appreciate this gesture. It tells them you trust them; it gives them some responsibility, and that is a good way to get your kids to learn as they help grow the garden. If the garden is big enough, consider dividing the garden up by section. Assign each of these sections to your kids, telling them it’s their job to maintain that area. Giving kids this kind of responsibility builds character.
These are some things you and your family could do once you have started your garden. You all will learn more about gardening as you go along. Maybe learn a few tricks to get better and better.
