Indoor Gardening: Playing in the Dirt with Kids

Children Love to Watch Plants Grow Indoors and Out

Mar 31, 2009

When the sun is shining but it's still too cool to play outdoors in the garden, bring the dirt indoors and plant seeds with children.

The groundhog saw his shadow and pronounced there would be six more weeks of winter. Don't worry, though. You can still get ready for spring. Bring the potting soil inside and help children prepare for the growing season.

There are many garden plants that can be started inside and others that grow quickly enough to satisfy childish needs for more plants now.

Collect Materials

Buy a bag of potting soil and sweeten it with nutrients from your compost heap or add crushed leaves. It is also good to mix potting soil with a little of the soil from your yard. Vegetables you start inside will be planted outside eventually and getting them used to the native soil helps them thrive. If you don’t have compost or the yard is still frozen, these extras aren’t essential, so read on.

Peat pots from the store are good because you can transfer your plants grown in them directly to the garden. However, there are many good pots that you can save from the landfill for awhile. The clamshell plastic boxes that grape tomatoes and other vegetables are packed in make great garden boxes. You can also cut about 3 inches off of the bottom of plastic milk jugs or other milk or juice boxes to create planters.

Buy seeds from the hardware or garden shop. You’ll also need small shovels or spoons to scoop and dig in the dirt.

What Seeds to Buy

Tomatoes that sprout from seed and grow from a few inches and up to a foot tall by time to plant outdoors are great to get started now. Tomatoes are one of the easiest garden vegetables to grow indoors from seeds. Herbs started indoors now will be nice-sized seedlings for planting outdoors in a month or two.

However, young children might want to see results quickly. For fast results, try mung beans, sunflowers, radishes, lentils, and peas.

Plant, Water, Watch

Spread paper on the floor and get to work. Fill pots with dirt. Talk to kids about how deep to plant the seeds. Determine the seed-planting depth from the seed packet and use a Sharpie to a quarter or half inch line on the child’s finger. Allow them to poke a finger in the dirt to the prescribed depth, and then insert the seed. Fill in the hole over the seed.

All seeds and plants love a little drink of water to get started, so allow kids to water their plants. Set pots in a sunny location. In a week or two, the kids will be excited to see progress. In another month when all chance of frost has passed, they can insert the peat pot or seedling into an outdoor garden.

While waiting for sprouts to appear, read books about healthy eating and find recipes that will allow your young gardener to make something fun and nutritious for lunch!

The copyright of the article Indoor Gardening: Playing in the Dirt with Kids in Vegetable Gardens is owned by Sara E. Lewis. Permission to republish Indoor Gardening: Playing in the Dirt with Kids in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.