Gardening with a 2 year old

She-she and Mommy using our Pellets right after a spaghetti dinner!

I have a beautiful little two year old girl, She-she.  She is brilliantly smart, stubborn, and happy.  She is also an outdoor kid, she would go outside in the pouring rain if I didn't lock the door!  So the idea of gardening with her was immediately something I wanted to do.  I've got several plants already growing, and she's helped me with most of them.

Our Strawberry patch (still in its infancy!) 

I won't claim to be a champion gardener, but I will say that its a great bit of exercise and an opportunity to teach your kiddos where their food comes from, especially if you have a "nurturer" child, they'll become incredibly excited checking on the "baby" seeds and plants.  She-she even read a book to the newly tucked in babies.

If you have never used pellets for starters I highly recommend them.  We just grabbed a 12 pack from Lowes for around five bucks.

They're the easiest things to use and are great for starting pumpkins, watermellon, cantelope, peas, etc.  They're also great to allow you to start inside in case you have "iffy" spring weather (we've been known to get snow storms in May)

Start off with a 1 3/4 c warm water and slowly fill the pellet trays to swell the pellets.  She-she was hugely excited to watch them expand and drink up water.

She-she Dropping the seeds on the plate. 

She-she poured the seeds onto a plate so we could plant them.  We talked about seeds and how they grew up into plants.  We (her daddy and I) explained they were "baby" plants, which really excited her so we went with it.

Prepping the pellets for seeds (Excuse the dinner mess!) 

Next we "made a bed for baby" by pulling the film back and digging a little hole for the seeds, she kept saying "cute little baby!" through the whole thing.

She-she counting three seeds in each pellet.

We carefully put three seeds in each one with She-she directing the counting.  We let her count, sometimes she would count to three and sometimes she would go to the next pod and count to six.

She-she was so excited about tucking in the babies for their sleep she started reading a book to them!

Our pellets aren't sprouting yet - its only been 24 hours, but I'm excited to show her the growth of the little plants.

The key with gardening with your kids is to have patience.  Earlier this spring she plucked every single one of my tulips...I almost had a complete fit then I realized they were there for our enjoyment and to be pretty for us.  I didn't mind so much because she got so much enjoyment out of them.  When she's a little bigger she will get her own plot of ground and get to choose which vegetable or fruit she'd like there.