Hi I'm Helen Muntz with Utah State University Extension.
Today I'm here at the Ogden Botanical Gardens.
And I wanted to share with everyone just some information
and fun activities that you can do to get your kids involved
with the garden.
There are some amazingly unbelievable statistics
out there with the benefits that come
from involving your children in gardening activities.
Some of the obvious ones of course,
are just health related.
Getting kids out there physically active,
out in the sunshine.
Very good statistics on cardio respiratory health in youth
that have been involved in gardens.
But also then of course, the vegetable and fruit consumption
actually increases quite a bit.
I mean, kids love to eat vegetables or fruits
that they get to pick out of their own garden.
And it also shows that studies have
shown that adolescents and college age
kids tend to consume more fruits and vegetables when
they gardened in their childhood than those who have not.
So you have these long-term health benefits.
And then the other thing, of course,
is that the act of gardening, especially with kids,
is just a great way to get his hands on real life
experience on science learning.
So the biology and chemistry behind the soil
and the insects, and how everything kind of ties
together in the garden and how the plants grow,
is a really great experience for children.
And then also, when you're doing it with the family
or maybe it's an after school program
or it's a school garden or a club,
children actually are able to build relationships and learn
some responsibility when they're out in the garden.
And studies have proven that as well.
So it's really important to especially if you're at home
and you have a backyard garden, get kids involved.
And lastly, kids actually they start
to get really exposed to the idea of where their food comes
from.
So why is it different when it's out of your garden
then when you buy it at the grocery store?
And environmental stewardship.
So what kind of things that people
do that actually affect the environment,
whether it's positively or negatively.
And so incorporating some of the ideas
like recycling and composting and all those sort of things.
So today I would like to show you just some fun simple ways
to get your kids involved and start
trying some of these new fun activities
with your kids or grandkids, or nephews and nieces at home.
So the most important part about getting
kids excited about gardening is to make sure
that it's super fun.
So you want to think about some super fun activities for kids
to get them really engaged.
One thing that I got for my son for his birthday--
actually his grandma did--
just kids size tools and a little tote bag.
He loves them.
With little spades and shovels, watering can.
Kids love hauling water around, doing the chores.
But anything involving water, they love.
The other good tip is getting them excited about bugs.
So kids just, they love bugs.
Any age, they love bugs.
Make a bug collection, do some composting.
Collect worms and put them in your compost.
Here I have a compost bin.
This is one that we've used for the junior master gardener
program, and they absolutely loved it.
This is called a worm hotel and I bought it online.
It's pretty pricey, but there's a lot
of cool instructional videos and fact sheets
out there on how to make your own for a little bit cheaper.
So here's the worm hotel, and this has red worms in it.
And so you can also buy those online.
But as you can see we just put some of our fruit and vegetable
scraps.
Oh look, and they're going nuts on that.
I don't know if you can see that,
but look at these wormies going crazy.
And it's so cool because they'll just eat up all the vegetable
scraps and they make this wonderful composted dirt.
So kids really like it.
It's something I would encourage.
And it's also something that you can actually use indoors.
And if you make it right it can be pretty clean.
It doesn't stink.
So that's kind of a fun way to get kids into bugs
and composting and recycling our kitchen scraps.
So another thing to get kids really excited about being
out in the garden, is having some fun garden art activity
or incorporating fun structures and things,
like a green bean teepee or a structure like this behind us.
It just makes it a little bit more enticing and fun.
There's a lot of ideas out there on different types of garden
art.
You can make birdhouses, you can paint rocks.
Pinwheels are super fun for kids, and those kind of things.
But another important thing is to try
to keep it simple when you're starting
the garden with children.
So give them their own little separate plot
where they can plan out what they want to do, or just kind
of get them interested and excited
by doing some pretty easy to grow things.
So things I like to grow that are pretty easy to grow
are just the sugar snap peas and the green beans
to go on my green bean teepee.
Carrots and lettuce or really great.
Spinach.
Radishes, of course.
So a lot of things that are pretty simple to grow.
Start with that so that you're not discouraging,
especially the younger kids.
And then the top pick and eat vegetables
that kids tend to love, are definitely
the sweet peas and the cherry tomatoes.
Carrots are a big favorite with kids.
The green beans, and you can get pull or bush beans.
And so you just kind of try different things.
Of course, fruits are great.
So strawberries are super fun.
If you have room for a fruit tree,
apples and peaches are great.
Now, if you don't have a lot of room
in your backyard or your front yard--
my garden in my front yard-- but if you just
have a small patio or porch or something,
you can always do a little kid garden
and you don't have to spend a lot of money on necessarily a
raised bed or anything like that.
I like to use old tree pots from when I've bought big shrubs
or trees at the nursery.
Or sometimes they might sell them to you for cheap
or donate.
You can spray paint them so they're not just kind
of black and scroungy.
But this will hold--
I've grown peas in these, I've grown cherry tomatoes.
And other things and they're good size
to hold a good amount of dirt.
So that's another fun thing to do with the kiddos.
So I hope you enjoyed watching the video today,
and that you got some great tips on getting
kids involved with gardening.
If you want to learn more about how to do that,
we've got some great programs coming up.
We have a junior master gardener program here
at the Ogden Botanical Gardens in June.
And there's another junior master gardener program
happening in July at the USU Botanical Center in Kaysville.
You can find more information on that
at extension.usu.edu you under the calendar events.
And if you have any questions about it,
feel free to call your local extension office
and we'll help you out.
I hope you enjoyed the video today, and happy gardening.