Kids Gardening; Best Vegetables to Grow with Kids

Now is the time to learn about what are the BEST Vegetables to Grow with Kids this year in your garden. We are excited to share with you our top picks of vegetables for gardening with kids.

Becky of Kid World citizen, master teacher, talented writer and expert in Global Education is our guest writer today. She has a fabulous backyard garden and her kids are willing to try new vegetables for dinner because of it.

Best Vegetables to Grow With Kids

By Becky, author of Kids World Citizen

It’s just about that time of year to end this miserable cold (finally) and start enjoying spring weather and thinking about what vegetables to grow with kids in our gardens! Gardening is the ideal outdoor learning experience: playing in the mud, learning about underground ecosystems, watching our plants grow with sunlight and rain and some tender care, and getting the gratification of growing a food that we can eat at the end of the process (and maybe even trying something new!).

If you’d like to get your kids more involved this year, here are our best veggies to grow with kids.

Vegetables to Grow with Kids: Fastest Growing for (almost) Instant Gratification

1. Radishes

2. Baby Carrots

3. Lettuce

Kids want it, and want it NOW! All of these choices will germinate from seed in just days when you add water and sunlight, giving kids a chance to see how crooked or straight their seed lines were! What about spreading the seeds in the form of their initial?

What’s great about these three choices is that you can pick and eat them while they are still young, shortening growing time even more.

Vegetables to Grow with Kids: Most Prolific Veggie for Raw Munchers

1. Cherry tomatoes

2. Snap Peas

3. Herbs (try mint, lemon balm, parsley, or chives)

One of the best part of gardening is being able to eat raw veggies straight from the plant. To be honest, I don’t remember ever being able to pick enough snap peas to actually make them because my kids eat the entire harvest from the vine before I even get to snap a picture. Cherry tomatoes are a given, because varieties nowadays produce fruit the entire growing season (65-85 F during the day, and nights should be above 55).

As for herbs, mint grows, and grows, and if you’re not careful it can take over your herb garden! That being said my kids think it’s cool that they can walk by and grab a leaf to eat. If your kids don’t like mint, try parsley or chives, or even lemon balm for a sensory blast every time you walk past it.

Vegetables to Grow with Kids: Best Choice for Those without a Green Thumb

1. Potatoes

2. Asparagus

3. Green beans

If you are looking for the absolute easiest to grow- meaning you forget that you even have a garden- look no further. My green beans have been re-seeding themselves for years and grow like a jungle with little care. Asparagus sounds challenging, but it is incredibly simple. From the snowy Midwest to tropical Houston, plant it once, and it will grow in the same spot every growing season for 20 years! Potatoes are so easy it is almost a joke.

I once sent my 5 year old out to the garden with a container of forgotten purple potatoes from Whole Foods that had gone bad, forgotten in the back of our pantry. I told Ricky to plant them and I honestly forgot he had done so for a couple of months.

We went out to prepare our garden in the spring and found the ground peppered with TONS of purple potatoes that had grown during our mild winter!

More related articles from Becky

How to Compost with Kids
35 Service Projects for Kids
Where in the World is Your Food From

Click for more Gardening with Kids

I adore her blog’s, motto, “activities that help young minds go global” and could spend hours reading and learning from her.  If you too are interested in global education, I encourage you to check out her latest book, The Global Education Toolkit for Elementary Learners.

Thank you so very much Becky for joining us for Kids in the Garden; Learning and Growing and sharing this great list with us. I agree with you wholeheartedly with everything, except #2 on the best to grow if you don’t have a green thumb list, as I’ve never tried to grow it – YET. ~Amanda

Stay up to date with the latest Kids In The Garden articles <click here>

What are your favorite veggies for kids?

I’d love to hear what you’re planning this spring!