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Amazon Store Front: Kid’s Cutting Garden
I'm always looking for things to do outside with my toddlers that we can both enjoy. I like gardening, and they like being outside, so in theory it seems like it should work perfectly together. The reality, though, is that if you've spent any amount of time with a toddler, you know they can make things very messy. I’m trying to accomplish something (and keep my sanity and cool), it can sometimes feel like all I’m doing is saying, "Don't step there," "Don't pull that," or "Please don't pick that flower."
The hard part is that most of us aren't trying to keep our kids out of the garden. I want my kids there with me. I think a lot of us millennial moms are trying to relearn skills that previous generations just seemed to know. Somewhere along the way, convenience became the goal, and now many of us are trying to get back to gardening, baking from scratch, preserving food, and all the other things we hope to pass on to our children someday. With the help of all our technical tools we have the knowledge of how to do all these homesteading things but not the practice so we’re trying to learn as we’re doing without a human teacher guiding us. That makes theses early years of parenting and working in the garden/homesteading hard.
All that to say…instead of constantly trying to protect my flowers and vegetables, I decided to give my daughter a garden of her own. Not a huge garden and not anything fancy just a few containers filled with flowers she could plant, water, and pick whenever she wanted. I went for the best budget friendly garden I could.
Starting With What I Already Had
If you're anything like me, you probably have way too many seed packets sitting around. Every year I place a seed order with great big plans, and every year I end up with leftovers. So when we decided to make this little flower garden, I didn't buy anything special. I just dug through my seed collection and picked flowers that I knew generally grow pretty easily. I have three main places I buy my seeds from- Rohrer Seeds in Lancaster, PA (great prices for locals), Burpee Seeds for consistent products, and SeedsNow for lots of unique varieties and free shipping over $10.
We planted cosmos, zinnias, marigolds, and strawflowers. I also highly recommend sunflowers if you have the space. I didn't plant any in these containers because the grow bags weren't nearly large enough, but sunflowers are always a huge hit with kids. There's just something exciting about watching a flower grow taller than you are.
I was a little disappointed with the marigolds. I've planted them around my garden before because they're often recommended as companion plants, and I’ve heard it said that it helps keep rabbits away. Whether that's true or not, I had plenty of seeds on hand, so we planted them. This time around, though, they just didn't seem to come up very well. The zinnias and cosmos definitely outperformed them.
If you've never grown strawflowers before, I highly recommend them. They're one of my favorite flowers because they dry so well. My sister-in-law used strawflowers in the boutonnieres for her wedding, and I kept one attached to a picture frame afterward. I had it for about 5 years until my kiddos got a hold of it. But it kept its color!
Why I Used Grow Bags
For this project, I used inexpensive woven grow bags. Part of the reason was practical. We're planning on moving, and I wanted something that could come with us. If everything was planted directly in the ground, we'd have to leave it behind. With grow bags, I can simply load them up and take them to our next house. I chose 1 gallon because I’m currently recovering from a c-section and needed an extra light weight option.
Here’s a bonus I didn’t realize until AFTER I bought the grow bags, they drain really well!. We've had some pretty heavy rain lately here in the Northeast, and the grow bags handled it without any issues. The water drains right through, so I didn't have to worry about the flowers becoming waterlogged during some of those downpours. The flowers have also withstood the test of lots of extra watering from my other toddlers who love to water plants. All. Day. Long!
Cheap Potting Soil Works Just Fine
I didn't use anything fancy for this project. I bought the cheapest potting mix I could find at Walmart because this is a kid flower garden and an experiment.
I'm not trying to grow award-winning vegetables. I'm not trying to maximize production. The goal is simply to give my child a place where she can dig, plant, water, and learn alongside me. Sometimes I think we overcomplicate projects with kids when they really don't care whether the potting mix was premium or on clearance.
For our little cutting garden, we used a 1 cubic foot bag of potting mix. In our experience, that was enough to fill about 7–10 one-gallon grow bags while still leaving about 1–2 inches of headspace at the top for watering. For reference, a 1 cubic foot bag contains approximately 7.5 gallons of potting mix, so if you plan to fill your containers completely to the brim, you'll need more soil than you might expect. I also like having a little extra potting mix on hand because the soil settles after the first few waterings, making it easy to top off the containers later in the season.
The Whole Project Took About 20 Minutes
As a mom with multiple littles ones I need projects and crafts that come together fast and move fast. I’m usually trying to squeeze an activity in with one child between nursing sessions, diaper changes, or the continual “I’m hungry, can I have a snack” requests. This project came together very quickly. We filled the grow bags with soil, planted the seeds, covered them up, and gave everything a good watering. From start to finish, it probably took about 20 minutes.
That's short enough to fit into a normal day with kids and short enough that a toddler can stay interested the entire time.
The grow bags turned out to be especially nice once it came time to water. Because they drain so well, my daughter can pretty much water them to her heart's content without drowning the plants. If you have younger children who love carrying around a watering can and "helping," that's a pretty nice feature.
The Exciting Part Came a Week Later
Within about a week, we started seeing little seedlings pop through the soil, and that was when the project really became exciting for my daughter. She wanted to go check her flowers to see what had grown overnight. She wanted to water them, check out the new sprouts, and see which ones were getting taller.
Before long, she started telling me all the things she wanted for her birthday. She wanted a gardening shirt. She wanted gardening gloves. She wanted new boots and little garden tools so she could help me. That brought a smile to my face. I debated whether or not I should do this activity but after that interaction I knew it was a great choice! The flowers (hopefully) will be nice, but what I had hoped for was that she would start developing a love for gardening and being outside. Watching that happen has been far more rewarding than the flowers themselves.
If I Did It Again
We kept this project pretty simple because that's what fits into life right now. But if I had more time, there are definitely a few things I would add.
My oldest loves art, so I think it would be really fun to use terracotta pots and let kids decorate them with acrylic paint markers before planting. She would absolutely love sitting outside drawing flowers, bugs, and whatever else she could think of on her own flower pots.
I also think homemade garden markers would be fun. I've made salt dough decorations before, and I could see us making little plant markers out of salt dough or air-dry clay. Kids could color them, write the names of their flowers on them, and place them in the pots. You could even turn it into a little art project and mini science lesson at the same time.
Another thing I would do differently is use brighter containers. The grow bags I had were just plain old black but I actually own some brightly colored ones too. Some of them are almost neon. For me, they're a little much. For a toddler, they're perfect. Looking back, I think she would have loved having a bright pink or purple flower garden.
Looking Ahead
This is something I plan to keep doing every year. When we move and have a little more space, I may eventually give her a section in the ground instead of using containers. Although, if you've ever given a toddler an empty raised bed, you probably know exactly what happens. It quickly becomes a giant dirt box.
We have a raised bed that basically became a digging area for all the kids. If I have extra seeds laying around, especially older packets that I'm not completely confident in, I'll often let the kids plant those too. At that point, there's really no downside. Maybe flowers grow. Maybe they don't. The kids still have fun.
I think a lot of gardening with children depends on your personality and what season of life you're in. Some moms love beautifully organized gardens with matching markers and perfectly planned layouts. Some moms are just trying to get a few plants in the ground before nap time ends. Most of us are somewhere in the middle.
For me, this little flower garden gave my daughter a place where she could say yes to gardening. She can water it, check on it, pick flowers from it, and dig in the dirt without me worrying about my vegetables or flower beds. They're her flowers.
I’m hoping this will make gardening much more enjoyable for the both of us. If you're looking for a simple outdoor activity this spring or summer, a few packets of flower seeds, some inexpensive containers, and a bag of potting soil might be all you need. It doesn't have to be perfect. It just has to give your kids a place to dig, plant, and grow something of their own.