My girls are 5 and 10 and we garden every year. They each have their own garden, about 4' x 6' and they pick what they want planted, and they have to keep it watered and weeded. Last year we also planted a stir fry garden with Bok Choy, broccoli, and carrots. It was a lot of fun to go and get our meal straight from the garden.
We also like planting out rows silly, try planting your corn in a zig zag pattern, or your carrots in a circle, my kids enjoy helping take care of it if its a little silly.
We also name the plants our zuchinni last year was wilma, and the yellow squash was fred.
Happy gardening!

Both, he loves to water so I can't keep him out of that task and it gives him a sense of pride to have his own. It worked out well though, because I couldn't get him to eat carrots until HE grew them. Now he can't stop telling everyone he grows and eats HIS carrots. He's three.

This year he wants to plant (he picked what he wanted to):
Sunflowers
Pumpkin (dwarf variety)
Watermelon (dwarf variety)
Stawberries
and, of course, carrots

Have fun and enjoy, afterall, what's the worst that can happen?!

-Robin

Hi!
I am new to this site and fairly new to gardening but love the topic here... my kids are 2 and 5 and this year my 5 yr old has been asking for her own garden so we sketched out the corner that will be hers and looked thru colorful catalogs for things she'd like to plant. We looked at the "sun" symbols and she could point out flowers that needed more shade than she had, etc. We'll see how it works! She chose sunflowers, marigolds, carrots and razzle dazzle petunias-- (cool stripes!) Last year she just helped out whenever she felt like it - helped me plant the beans and marigolds. I hope to start some of her plants indoor this weekend (never done that before)...it'll be an experiment! And some we'll buy at the nursery. Some we'll start from seed outside in the spring. My kids assigned a tomato plant to each member of the family ("mommy plant, daddy plant") and loved to compare their progress and talk about whose tomato was in the salad!
take care!
Jackie

I have a 5 year old. In the past she has helped me with watering and light weeding (she ends up collecting worms while I weed).

This year we are planning to plant her own flower bed - something small with her own choices. We are also going to try to put together a butterfly garden to see if we can attract butterflies.

I love the idea of naming plants. We name our house plants. Her spider plant "Sunny" is doing quite well.

I homeschool my three girls, Melody 6 and Faith and Emily 5. Last year they each took care of their own plants, this year they will each have a section of their own to take care of. We will also be keeping a growth chart. We will measure the plants weekly and track when they bloom. We will also try some experiments with fertilizing and not fertilizing some plants to see which one gets better blooms. We'll probably set up a rain guage too. Should be a lot of fun!