Growing Carrots from Seeds - Perfect for Kids

While I can not say that what I am about to tell you will make your kids devour carrots like a hungry rabbit, it should at least get them excited about growing and harvesting them. On a side note, sort of on topic, ironically, I have put some carrots out for the rabbits and they won’t eat them, only the carrot greens. The squirrels on the other hand, well, they will eat just about anything.

Here is how I got my two boys excited about growing carrots. I will get into a little trick my wife uses to actually get them to eat the carrots, a little bit later.

I built and dedicated a four foot by four foot raised bed, made from landscaping timbers that are readily available at any home center for a few bucks, for my kids’ carrot growing adventures. There is nothing fancy about this raised bed, as you can see. It is a simple square, two layers of timbers high.

Once the raised bed garden is built, you will need to add in some soil. Your options really are limitless here with any of the organic soil varieties available at garden centers, to the “create your own” methods. One thing's for sure, since carrots are a root crop you will want to have soil that is loose and friable. It will allow your carrots to grow more freely and give their roots a chance to spread out.

Your bed is set up, you have your soil in the bed, now comes the time to plant the seeds. Two years ago I gave my sons a couple of packs of carrot seeds and told them to go ahead and have fun. While they enjoyed that very much, the bed had carrots everywhere and some too close together. Neither issue resulted in a less tasty carrot or reduced amount of fun, but we did make some changes for this year.

Instead, for this year, we created rows for 5 different varieties of carrots and spread the rows apart about seven to eight inches. I had them lightly sprinkle each variety of seeds in their marked row, making sure we did not overseed any particular spot. I was keeping a close on the project (sort of).

So, as you can imagine, up to this point, from working with wood, to playing with dirt, to planting seeds, they were having a ball. What kid wouldn’t like getting dirty right?

Once everything was planted I would go out to the raised bed with my sons every other day or so and help them pick any weeds, making sure they understood, the raised bed, was for carrots only. My way of convincing them that weeding was a good thing.

Fast forward a couple of months and the raised bed is filled with carrots. I think the big thrill for kids about carrots, or so it seemed to me by watching my sons, was the fact they could not actually see how big the carrot is until they pulled it. This also presented a slight problem because if my older son picked a carrot and it was huge, and my younger son picked one and it was smaller, my younger son would want to keep picking until he had the larger carrot. I was constantly on “do not pick too many” patrol.

Now that they have had so much fun picking carrots, how do you get your kids to eat them? My wife likes to shred the carrots and add them to just about everything she cooks. It keeps the pieces small, and when cooked, they soften up so it makes it easier for them, I suppose. 

I'll write about the onion bed in a future post :-)

About the Author

Mike Podlesny is the author of Vegetable Gardening for the Average Person: A Guide to Vegetable Gardening for the rest of us, the moderator for the largest vegetable gardening page on Facebook and creator of the monthly Seeds Club.

Watch the video below to learn more about Mike`s Seeds of the Month Club:

How to Get your Kids Involved in Vegetable Gardening

It was my dad that introduced me to vegetable gardening and my grandfather that introduced him. Where it started, in my family, prior to my grandfather, I have no idea, but one thing is for sure, and that is our family loves to grow fresh fruits and vegetables.

Now that I have two sons of my own, I have been introducing them to it and thus far, they seem to love it. I recently read an article in Parents Magazine that gave a piece of helpful advice on spending more time with your kids, and that was to incorporate your children with the activities that you are doing. For example, changing the batteries in the smoke detectors. While I change them batteries, I have my kids hand them to me. That sort of thing.

I put this piece of advice to the test for gardening. The other day I was outside getting the garden ready for the upcoming season. In past years, I would just go out and do what needed to get done. This year, I decided to get the kids involved.

Luckily, my kids have their own garden tools, compliments of Grand mom. This makes the process of getting them involved a whole lot easier. The specific project I was working on was to remove the dirt from a large box that I built a few years ago to grow potatoes in, and put that dirt back in the main garden.

I grabbed my trusty shovel and asked them if they wanted to help to get out their shovels. They are young, so of course I wasn’t expecting much in actually speeding up the job, but I was pleasantly surprised as to how excited they were to use their tools, dig in the box and take the dirt over to the main garden. Surprisingly, most of the dirt on their shovels actually made it over there.

My next incorporating advice was to see if they would like planting the seeds. I always start most of my seeds indoors in a propagation dome and use my kids’ leftover yogurt cups (as well as mom and dad’s k-cups), filled with soil from my garden. This project was 3 fold, of which, I “let” them do all the work.

With plastic spoons in hand, a Tupperware bowl filled with soil from my garden, the kids were to fill each seed starting cup with soil. Needless to say they loved it, although my youngest at times felt it was more fun to fill the seed starting cups by hand. I’ll save that story for another time.

Once the cups were filled, I gave them each some seeds they were to plant. They were different varieties of lettuce and spinach. I then showed them how to pinch the seeds with their fingers so they did not put too many seeds in each cup. They got the idea, however, some of the cups did get a lot of seeds. On a side note, I hope the neighbors like Oakleaf lettuce.

Finally, I had them cover the seeds with a little more soil and give it a watering. I did the watering. Visions of flooding my kitchen floor danced through my head.

This was a great project for my kids and was fun for them and for me to watch. It was all about showing my kids how to get the seeds started and they really took to it. My oldest son looks at the seed cups everyday to see if anything has sprouted. He is really getting into it and that is awesome!

Now wait until I show them how much fun weeding is in the middle of July!


About the Author

Mike Podlesny is the author of Vegetable Gardening for the Average Person: A Guide to Vegetable Gardening for the rest of us, the moderator for the largest vegetable gardening page on Facebook and creator of the monthly Seeds Club.

Watch the video below to learn more about Mike`s Seeds of the Month Club:

Great Seed Starting Project for Kids

You can use a variety of items to start your seeds in, from your garden's own soil, to a mixture of equal parts compost, perilite and peat. While other methods will be just as fun to do with your kids, mine really enjoyed using the seed starter pellets. This particular box of 72 (refills) cost me $5.99 at Home Depot. You can also buy a small propagation dome (you will see this shortly) which include the pellets. They range in price from $1.99 up through $9.99 depending on how advanced you want to get.

Have your kids place the pellets in a plastic tray. The one in this photo is a smaller propagation dome that holds 12 pellets. It costs $1.99 at Home Depot and comes with the 12 pellets. Since I have had this one for a few years I needed to buy the replacement pellets as shown in the previous step. My 2 year old and 4 year old enjoyed putting the pellets in the tray.

Using a plastic cup, fill with warm water...not hot and not cold ... WARM water. While the pellets will expand on hot water, it does not make for a great environment for the seeds. Cold water will "eventually" get the seed pellets to expand ... do you have an hour or so? Warm water will make them expand instantaneously.

Here are what the pellets look like once they have expanded.

Have your kids choose something they would like to grow. In my son's case, here we are planting broccoli. What can I say, I am lucky, the young man loves to eat broccoli, so growing it makes perfect sense.

Just remember the smaller the seeds you choose the more likely your child will pick up A LOT of them at once and plant a bunch in each pellet. It's not really a big deal, you will have to go back later after they sprout to thin each pellet out. Once they reach the top of the dome, carefully use a pair of scissors and snip the extras leaving 1 or 2 plants behind. Using larger seeds makes this easier (i.e. squash, watermelon etc.).

Have your child put the dome on top. This helps seal in the moisture and create a greenhouse. A constant temperature and moisture level will exist, making for a perfect seed starting environment. If you are using your own home made tray you can cover with clear plastic wrap and that will serve the same purpose.

Place the finalized tray with pellets, seeds and dome on a window sill that receives sunlight first thing in the morning. For faster germination, place it on the same window sill NEAR (NOT ON) a heater vent.

CAUTION: NEVER PUT IT ON THE HEATER VENT!

And that's it! Your seeds should germinate in 5 to 7 days, probably sooner. Once they grow tall enough to where they can no longer fit under the dome, I like to plant them in their own individual pots, if the outdoor temps are not ready for transplanting.

Combining Vegetable Gardening with School Curriculum

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Do you have school aged children? Are you a vegetable gardener? Imagine if you were able to combine the fun and reward of vegetable gardening with the education your child receives in school? I was thinking about this the other day and wanted to do some research on the topic. As a father of two and an avid vegetable gardener, to me the possibilities of combining the two, seemed like a no brainer.

However, I wanted to find out from teachers in the classroom if this is something that they do. After putting out some feelers I was fortunate enough to get in touch with 5th grade science teacher from High Shoals Elementary School, Linda Cooper.

According to Linda she incorporates a garden in the teachings of different types of plants. Linda, who also taught 1st and 3rd grade, (I teach 1st & 2nd graders part time, so I know how difficult that age group can be at times with the amount of energy they have), says, that in the lower grades, lessons include learning about the parts of the plant, seed sprouting, the plants basic needs, plant life cycles and the effects that over population or scarcity of plants has on communities. “A vegetable garden can give students more experience when taught these items,” says Linda.

As well as teaching science, Linda also runs the 5th grade environment club which currently has 20 students that have built raised beds for the purpose of growing fruits and vegetables. “Our students are also getting ready to start up a greenhouse that was purchased for our school.”

In her program, students get a chance to learn about farming and agriculture, where our food comes from and vegetables the students may not be familiar with. All great teachings that could lead our youth toward a path of understanding the importance of growing at least some of their own food.

Beyond getting the students excited about growing their fruits and veggies, her hopes are that the older 5th grade students become as passionate about vegetable gardening as she is and they assist with teaching the younger students their new learned skills.

Linda also believes she can incorporate the economic impact a vegetable garden can have and has laid out future plans to teach students vegetable gardening combined with math as it relates to purchasing equipment, supplies and being able to either sell what you grow, or calculate what you can save by avoiding paying for the grown vegetables in stores. Yet another valuable lesson combined with vegetable gardening.

About the Author

Mike Podlesny is the author of Vegetable Gardening for the Average Person: A Guide to Vegetable Gardening for the rest of us, the moderator for the largest vegetable gardening page on Facebook and creator of the Seeds Club.

Watch the video below to learn more about Mike`s Seeds of the Month Club: