How we Started a Snack Garden for Kids
This year the focus of the garden is on growing snacks for kids. Fruits and veggies they’ll want to eat straight off the plant. Foraging in the garden is a great way to encourage time outdoors and close observation. Let’s talk about what we’re growing this year that will make the kids go outside for more.
Last year we grew a small food garden on one raised bed. We had tomatoes, carrots, and cucumbers that the kids loved to pull and enjoy right away. During the summer I noticed the girls’ excitement whenever they found a treat growing in one of the few plants we had.
Last fall we invested in new food plants. We removed the one old raised bed and installed 3 new ones in it’s place. In total we have about 80 square feet of space to grow food in the sunniest part of the back garden. This means more tasty snacks growing on vines and bushes. More time spent outdoors looking closely at plants. Noticing when flowers bloom and how they turn slowly into fruit.
Learning when fruit is ready to eat and how to harvest it properly is a powerful way to encourage a closer connection with nature. This is how I grew up and how I came to recognize tens of different fruit trees by their leaves alone. This is something I want to foster in my girls and the students at the nature school.
Spring Series at the nature school starts April 13 and goes for 8 weeks. More on that here.
What perennials are we growing in the food garden?
Let’s start with a list of perennials already on the ground and ready to feed us this year:
Blackberries: we have 3 varieties on the ground, but only one might be old enough to produce fruit this year.
Raspberries: we also have 3 varieties on the ground and in this case, two should be giving us fruit this year.
Peach, apple, pear, pomegranate, feijoa, fig and cherry trees: these guys are all new, all between 2 and 4 years old and together they make the orchard of our baby food forest. Since the plants are young, we don’t expect any fruit this year. But by next year we should have a little.
Grapes: one vine should be producing fruit this year and we’re planting two more that might take a year or two to fruit.
Blueberries: we planted two blueberry bushes last year and it’s still a mystery if they’ll produce fruit or not. This fruit prefers acidic soil and since ours is fairly neutral we’re experimenting with amending it naturally. Still, we’ve heard it can take from 5 to 8 years for a blueberry bush to produce a strong yield, so only time will tell.
What annuals are we starting this year in the snack garden?
When planning for this year’s annuals we worked with the folks at Gardenologie to create a visual chart of what we wanted to grow. As part of their gardening master class, they showed us how to plan and gave us a template we are using to keep things organized. This document has been a game changer as we start seeds indoors. It not only shows what we want to grow and where, but also how many plants we need for each. More clarity makes gardening more fun.
Here’s the list of what fruit and veggie snacks we’re starting this year:
Cucumbers: delicious and easy to eat right off the vine. We’re growing small snack cucumbers, cucamelons (tiny cucumbers in the shape of a watermelon), and some larger salad cucumbers to use in the kitchen.
Tomatoes: some kids love them, some don’t. But for those who do, we’ll have small yellow and red cherry tomatoes as well as large heirloom ones also good for salads.
Strawberries: last year in the fall the chickens ravaged through the strawberry plants leaving only the roots. We transferred them to the new fenced raised beds where the chickens can’t reach, hoping they’ll spring back to life or we need to start new ones. To save space we’ll plant them with asparagus. Both perennials and great companion plants as one has deep roots (asparagus) and the other shallow. Also, strawberries spread and offer shade to the asparagus during the summer months.
Carrots: one of our favorite garden snacks last fall. The kids love harvesting it so much that we’re planting over 10 square feet of them this year.
Watermelon: this will be our first year growing watermelon and if we get a single one to share I’ll be very happy.
Ground Cherry: this fruit brings me back to being a kid and visiting my grandparents’ house. I remember going to their backyard to check for chickens eggs and yellow ground cherries. In their home in Colombia, uchuva is a perennial bush that can get quite large. Here in temperate regions, it’ll be a heat-loving annual, similar to a tomato plant. We’ll start it from seed sometime around March when we start our tomatoes.
That’s our plan for this year’s snack garden. We will focus on feeding, pruning and caring for our perennial food forest so it can grow strong and feed us snack fruit in the future. And in the mean time we’ll enjoy annuals like cucumbers and carrots and if we’re lucky, a delicious watermelon to share!
