Gardening Tips For Children
Gardening is not just for adults. It can be made into a fun-filled and educative activity for kids. After all, kids love to play in mud and a parent can use this same love to impart some knowledge about plants, bugs and birds to kids. Here are some useful gardening tips for children that parents will find extremely helpful. |
Whenever you go to potter in your garden, ask your kids to accompany you. Tell them that they can also potter around and play while you do some work. Kids love to take on responsibilities. So, you can your kids to help you harvest vegetables and fruits from the garden. The idea is to make them interested in gardening. If they have fun during gardening, they will love the activity and be ever ready to help out the parent.
Teaching kids about gardening begins from home itself. Point out bugs that come into and tell kids about how these bugs can be avoided by having certain plants. Nearly all kids love creepy crawly thingies and you can use this love to tell them about bugs and how they can be useful or bad for a gardener. The next time you go out into the garden, ask the kids to inspect a particular plant and tell you whether there are bugs on it. If you get beneficial bugs for your garden, allow the kids to let them loose. This will cause a whole lot of excitement and laughter among your kids. Teach them to identify some useful bugs and those that wreak havoc. (See Reference 1)
On a warm summer's day, get your kids to help out with the watering of the plants. While they are playing with water, ask them to water a couple of plants for you. Tell them how important water is for all living things on the planet and how plants, animals and humans will die without water. Tell them how important it is for the soil to be well drained and aerated. Let them touch the soil and tell you what they feel. Use pots to explain how drainage takes place in the soil. (See Reference 1)
Teach your kids to use the correct safety equipment like gloves, gardening apron and hat. While getting the hands dirty is important for gardening, being able to use the tools and implements correctly is also equally important. Allow them to hoe or till the soil for you. Make it into a laughter filled activity that they enjoy rather than making it into a task. (See Reference 1)
When you are planting vegetables and flowers, ask your kids to sit around you. Explain why it is necessary to plant complementary plants together. Also, you can awe them by telling them how some plants act as natural pest deterrents. Encourage the children to find out more about complementary plants and tell them that if they find out more information, you will allot a patch for them to grow their own complementary plants and vegetables. This should be incentive enough for them to do some research or experiment with growing different kinds of plants together. (See Reference 1) Also, teach the kids how they can use small space to the maximum by growing complementary plants.
While your kids may not appreciate or understand why you are teaching them gardening skills, it is important to keep persisting and making gardening into an enjoyable outdoor activity for them. When they grow up, they will thank your for the gardening lessons that they got during their childhood. (See Reference)
Using these gardening tips for children, you can not only enhance the knowledge of your kids, you can also introduce them to the wonderful world of growing plants and vegetables. This is one hobby that many kids will take up if you use the right methods to introduce them to gardening and growing plants.
More Articles :
1. Brighthub: Tips for Gardening with Children
https://www.brighthub.com/diy/lawn-garden/articles/102054.aspx
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Horticulture is the science of cultivating plants and it also refers to the industry where plants are cultivated for commercial purposes. When a person studies horticulture, he or she learns the different methods of plant propagation, crop production, plant engineering, plant physiology, pest control methods, and biochemistry of the plants. (See Reference 1) Thereafter, they can use this knowledge to increase the yield of the crops and plants to make it into a commercially viable industry.