My children love to garden. They love to dig, sow seeds, water seedlings and pick what they have grown. You can garden with your children in any kind of environment and even if you have a small or non-existent back yard you can always have pot plants indoors. I get

so many questions from friends who visit about how I garden with my children. They can't see how I can have such an extensive vegetable garden without the children destroying it. So here are a few ideas on how to get started and how to help your children understand the importance of growing your own produce.

COST

Gardening doesn't have to be an expensive hobby. I find second hand pots at the local tip, and even if they don't have any pots I always manage to find a suitable container. Be it an old holey bucket or recycled cans etc. Anything that is waterproof and that can have a few holes poked in the bottom for drainage is suitable. For soil you can dig some from your backyard or get some in bags from your local nursery. It does tend to work out cheaper if you get a trailer load from a local landscaping business but some people just don't have the room for this amount of soil. You don't have to buy fancy fertilisers for your garden. Just regular manure does a great job. Drop into a local farm and see if you can get a bag for free. They probably won't mind you cleaning up a bit of the mess for them. Just remember that some manure can be quite potent (especially chicken manure), so it can be best to mix it with some soil or compost and leaving it for a week or two to break down before placing it around your plants. Finding a couple of gardening books from the local op-shop can also be a fantastic help when you come across something you have no idea about. Or the children ask you a question a little beyond your knowledge. It is definately cheaper to buy everything from seed (and a lot more fun for the children) but be prepared for long days of watering, waiting and weeding! Water can be caught in a water tank especially bought for the garden or straight from the tap. Bath water can be recycled on the garden and even the rinse water from your washing machine (although some detergents can be detrimental to plants so do some reading before using any grey water). Small shovels can be bought quite cheap, but your hands can do just as good a job. Don't forget to include your children in any purchases. Get them into gardening right from the beginning. Let them choose what seeds they would like to sow or what sort of pot they would like to sow them in. Of course a little help from mum or dad may be needed as all plants have certain requirements as to when, where and in what they can be planted.

PLANTING SEEDS

Start with something simple. Sowing seeds. Show your child how you sow a seed. Fill a pot with soil and then dampen it down with a little water. Plant the seeds and then water it a little more. Explain every step as you go along and encourage them to ask questions. Then let them have a go. You are bound to get dirt and water absolutely everywhere, so don't have your children dressed in their best clothes! Even if half the seeds end up on the ground or look they are drowning in copious amounts of water, never fear. You can always go back later when they aren't watching and tidy the pots up a little. Seeds are tough little things. Explain to them that it can take up to a week before they will see anything happening but that the seeds have to be kept damp so that they can grow. Make a time every day so that you can water the seeds together and watch to see if anything has appeared.

KEEPING YOUR SEEDLINGS ALIVE

The look on a child's face when they see a little seedling poking out the soil is so amazing. They just can't believe that something they planted has started to grow. I keep my children interested by getting my eldest to measure the seedlings every second day. Or I ask my younger two which one is the biggest, mummy's seedling or theirs? Watering every day is still important as seedling can grow quite fast. And it may even be neccessary to transplant your seedlings into bigger pots or into a garden bed once they have grown to a certain size. Don't forget to keep the weeds at bay, you don't want them to get a stranglehold of your new seedlings. My children love to weed, even though a few seedlings may be sacrificed they can learn quite quickly what a weed looks like.

SEEDS WITH BEST RESULTS

I find that planting something that will either turn out pleasing to the eye or be edible are the best for children to garden with. Sunflowers, herbs, tomatoes, cucumbers, carrots, strawberries, beans or peas are just some suggestions. Talk to someone at your local nursery and see what can be planted at the time of year or the area you live in. Spring is a great time to be planting flowers, herbs and salad vegetables. And it is also a great time to be out in the garden in the lovely Spring weather.

HARVESTING AND EATING PRODUCE

Let your children pick what they have grown. Pull carrots from the ground, pick flowers for the vase in the kitchen, pick lettuce leaves and a cucumber for the salad you are making for dinner. Children love to shell peas when they are young, when they get older they realise what a chore it really is, so enjoy it when they are young and helpful in the garden. Encourage them to eat the vegetables raw, washed and eaten straight from the garden. Our strawberries never seem to make it too the kitchen. I actually thought I hadn't been getting any fruit until I saw my children round up all the ripe fruit the second they got outside. Home grown tomatoes have the best flavour and the children love to pick and eat them. We give the rotten ones to the chooks and collect seeds from the tomatoes we have grown for the following year. Melons are great to grow and pick, but they do take up a lot of space and a huge amount of water. Diggind up potatoes can be exciting. One plant may have only one or two, or another have several. I will pull a plant up and then let the children dig with their spades to find the potatoes left in the soil.

BOUNDARIES

By allowing your children to have a little pot or plot of their own in the garden it teaches them how to care for plants. And getting them involved in the buying, planting, watering, weeding, and harvesting will help them understand how much work there is to care for a garden and may even help them respect all the hard work you do. So hopefully they won't pull out all your fresh seedlings, or dig up newly sowed seeds, or pick unripe vegetables just for the fun of it. They will learn that there are boundaries in the garden, rules that need to be followed. And that gardening can be fun. Gardening is fun. That is the lesson to be learnt for all children.

YOUR IDEAS

Gardening isn't for everyone. But just having a pot of herbs on the windowsill can be a rewarding experience for a child. I would love to hear of other peoples ideas on how they garden with their children and what they plant. Gardening is a continous learning experience. I learn something new every day I go out into my garden. I hope this has been of some help and please write about your gardening experience!