Johnson Seeds this launched children seed range in April 2010, though I have only just learned about this at the GARDEN PRESS EVENT 2011.
How best to get your kids to eat their veg by actually encouraging them to grow their own. Once they have grown them themselves they will eat them.
Cool Carrots, Mini Munch, Racing Runners are the catchy headers for some of the edible vegetables and maybe we would find some nice catchy names for the likes of broccoli, spinach and other, important, greens, to encourage children to grow and eat them. Maybe the broccoli has to be left out simple because the can be a little difficult to grow, especially when pigeons are about. Salad veg of all kinds, as well as spinach and chard, however, would be good to do with some nice catchy names.
This may just be a way of getting kids interested in gardening and more importantly in food and as to where it comes from. When they grow their own, in 99% of all cases it has been found that they will then also eat it, regardless of whether previously they did not like it.
I would also like to say to introduce children to “wild” foods that grow in their gardens, edible weeds, be those dandelion, nettles, sorrel or others.
While I was lucks as a child to have been taught how to grow veg but also what is edible that I don't have to sew and plant I have also found that some of the wild stuff makes great eating.
I wonder how many kids (and adults, for that matter) know that dandelion and nettles are edible and are but one of a whole number of edible so-called weeds. Many people will not be aware of the fact that the vegetable side dish in Greek cuisine that they pay good money for, called Hortes, is nothing but dandelion leaves and nettle leaves cooked together like spinach. Most people also don't realize that that dish also is much better as to mineral content than is any spinach.
But I digressed...
It is good to see that seed merchants are beginning to cater for the young gardener, from child to youth, and the same is true for a number of good tool makers as well.
About time too... Those junior gardening apprentices are the gardeners, hobby and professional, of the future and we ignore them at our peril.
© 2011
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