Edible gardening - where to start?

[Luido]

Hi all,

I really want my son to eat good, wholesome fruit and vegetables fromour garden. He's almost two and I want him to understand where food comes from and everything like that.

The trouble is I have no idea where to start. I'm not a gardener but am willing to put the effort in to start an edible garden.

I'm from the UK, have a south facing garden but it doesn't get great sunlight. It's a decent size but the soil is a but thin with clay underneath.

Does anyone have a top 3 list of possible fruit and veg to get me going?

Many thanks,

[rainbowgardener]

It's a great project. Place to start now would be to start a compost pile. If you aren't familiar with composting, browse around in our Compost Forum! Then you will be able to build up your "thin soil." And you will be teaching your son about the whole food cyle, from food to compost pile to soil to food again!

Not great sunshine is a little limiting for veggies. Lots of veggies like lots of sun. You would be able to do all the cool weather stuff there, that includes broccoli, lettuce, spinach, swiss chard. Broccoli would be fun for the little one; it's an interesting looking plant that gets big pretty quickly. Swiss Chard Bright Lights variety is very colorful and is easy to grow and produces all season.

Carrots might work for you if you grow the short round varieties, the long ones won't like running into the clay. Radishes would be good and are great for kids, because such fast results!

There are several fruits that might work for you, but the trouble with fruits is I can't think of any that you can plant this year and eat this year, they need to get established first. But you could plant strawberries and raspberries and eat them next year.

[applestar]

I want to add peas to that list. Definitely do carrots as most kids like carrots. Round ones like Tonda di Parigi (Round of Paris) or Parmex are fun for them because of their unusual shape, and is easy to grow even in containers. Look also for FASTER maturing short carrots because it takes a while, carrots mature after kids have lost interest.

Hmm. You reminded me of this post I wrote a while ago: https://www.helpfulgardener.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=101172#101172

[Tigerlilylynn]

Now that someone with knowledge has spoken, I'll step in with my seed catalog.

Color variants are great for kids so I totally second the swiss chard. There's a radish (watermelon) that's white but when you cut into it it's fuchsia. Cauliflower and cabbage come up several colors. Mesclun of some variety might be nice since it'll come up a bunch of colors and shapes.

Also a raised bed or some containers might be a good way to get around the soil depth. Strawberries can be grown in containers pretty well and if you put a couple varieties in you can stagger the yield.

[applestar]

Oh! and don't forget to get your child a set of gardening tools and MOST IMPORTANT a small watering can. Not necessarily toy ones, especially the watering can because toy ones sometimes are HORRIBLE, not designed for the purpose at all.

Oh, oh! And get one of those stepping stone making kits from a craft store. They LOVE making them (you said two? watch out that he doesn't put the decorations in his mouth, but you could have him impress hand prints or foot prints! )

Oh wait, you're in UK -- consider gooseberries or currants since they don't need as much sun. But strawberries are my number one pick, and honestly? I've always picked the fruits the first year despite all the instructions to the contrary. Who could resist?

[nes]

Plant beans! They were a BIG hit with Lucas last year (he's almost 2 now), and he really loved the flowers on the pumpkins. Although his favourite part of the entire garden was that our cat loves to sleep under the leaves because it's cool there, so he could always find her and chase her...

Definitely get him his own gardening tools!!! Dollar store ones are JUST fine, otherwise you will find yours are quickly disappearing... This year I even found a plastic tote at the dollar store - we decorated it together so he has something to hold his tools in .

Make sure however you decide to plan your garden you leave walk-ways for little feet. I didn't do that last year & it ended in allot of trampled plants.

And for some reason Lucas has a real affinity for pulling up my tomato plants (and ONLY my tomato plants...) so I'm keeping them at the BACK of the garden this year .

I guess my top three would be:
-corn
-beans
-pumpkins
so you could do a 3-sisters .

I'd also add tomatoes & raspberries/strawberries to that list.

Oh and potatoes are great, so are spaghetti squash! (yummy!)...

There are also TONS of great garden-themed kids books around, I picked a ton up at a local book fair - Lucas LOVES them!

[GeorgiaGirl]

Great ideas above - I was going to say definitely blueberries, since they will just get better and better every year (by the time he's 5, the shrub will be bearing nicely and he'll be so excited when the blueberries are in season) as well as some "instant gratification" plants like some of the ones suggested (beans, Swiss chard, maybe sunflowers).

What causes the sunlight not be be very good? (a building, trees, etc.) Like others said, fruits and vegetables really need full sun, so if you're able to remove some lower limbs of nearby trees etc., that would be best for your food-growing efforts.

Have fun!!

[gixxerific]

Well there you go, what are you doing reading this post go get that garden ready.

I second, or is it third, the quick growing and long lasting veggies. Radishes are super fast producers and it's hard to kill Swiss Chard (bright lights variety is also very cool to look at). Not much else to add except have fun while your are doing it. I'm going to try to get my daughter involved this year. One more thing you say not much sun, so lettuce would be good as said. There are a ton of crazy colors and textures of lettuce that may be enticing to a 2 year old.

Dono