From the Garden to the Table: Teaching Kids Where Their Food Comes From

Getting outside and digging around in the dirt is fun on its own, and when you combine planting and growing flowers, fruit and vegetables, it becomes even more magical. Whether it’s a little sprout pot with a face that grows sprout hair on the kitchen bench or a full vegetable garden, the joy for children is the same.

Children are quite simple in the fact that they just want to spend time with you, and if that means helping scoop soil or counting tomatoes on a vine, it doesn’t matter, as long as they can count those tomatoes with you or show you the different colours of a flower. If you create games in the garden or around the herb pot in the kitchen, with the help of my book, ensures they will constantly be checking in on their new interest and showing you the progress every step of the way. Looking after something like a basil plant also shows the child how to care for something else, if they don’t water it, it will look droopy. It also gives them an early experience of how to build routine with watering or checking for bugs a few times a week.

By watching things grow, they get an understanding of where food comes from and will be more willing to help with meal prep and see how things taste. For example, children are much more likely to eat a spinach leaf from the garden, or bean or cherry tomato straight off the vine than when its on a dinner plate. Especially when that vine has a name and it produced a ‘gift’ for your little one to eat. It takes time to grow, and this also teaches children patience and delay in getting what they want, its not overnight but once a flower blooms or something is ready to pick and eat, it is well worth the wait.

Tips: Compare the shapes and colours of fruit and veg to other things in life, e.g. Basil leaves look like mini ship sails or flags, Kiwi fruit looks like troll boulders, eggplant/aubergine look like hot air balloons filling up with air as they grow, beans look like little fishing rods. Name the main plant anything you want, for example and ask if ‘Viney’ has turned any flowers into fruit for us today. Encourage children to come up with their own ideas. Turn Rosemary sprigs into magic wands, and explain that we put rosemary into food because its magic make the food tase wonderful. They will be more likely to try this ‘magic potion’ rather than is normal name of Spaghetti Bolognese. Ask them to tap the dinner plate with the magic wand so that dinner will taste magical.

Another fun game is to put googly eyes on the zucchini, tomatoes, pumpkins, whatever they can stick to and ask the children to paint their own pots which ever way they like, and watch their interest in gardening blossom.