Many of us are parents and grandparents and we enjoy sharing our lives with our children. Do your children have their own garden areas or do they enjoy helping you with gardening?

 

My daughter used to garden right along side of me and her Noni when she was little. My son and my husband are the ones that pull the garden up at the end of the season.

We don't have a yard or garden, but our church has a community garden and we participate in that. The church rents out most of the plots , but keeps 3 or 4 for the use of the church and it's members. There is a committee of gardening ladies that organizes it and if you want to participate you pay a nominal fee and sign up on the volunteer rosta. Then as things are harvested-you help with that also and get to take home lots of veggies. There is always at least one plot that everything that gets harvested is given to the soup kitchen and local food pantry.

Our volunteer stints are in 2 hour blocks a couple of times a week, plus a chunk at the beginning and end of the season. Usually DH or I will go and take a couple of the boys each time. So they have grown up doing this-probably have more gardening know-how than I do, which isn't bad considering we live in a townhouse complex.

Hannah

 I do both.  GD is helps in the family garden as it benefits the family, but she has had her own space since she was three.  Her plot at the time was planted in strawberries which was easy for her to learn the difference between weeds and plants. 

She has requested a larger garden this year and has already started her own notebook where she has made a garden plan and selected what will be grown.

A garden teaches many important lessons.  They learn to plan goals, gain an appreciation of working together on larger projects,developing a skill set that will serve them well as adults and most importantly, give them an opportunity to learn the rewards of delayed gratificacation.

I could go buy strawberries at the store any time GD wants them and sometimes I do.  GD knows that she can have ones shipped thousands of miles, or she can have ones that she has weeded, watered, covered, and uncovered and worked for. 

She also knows she can plunk down amongst her own berries and eat them right then and there, berries warmed by the morning sun, berries so sweet and juicy they burst in you mouth and the juice runs down your chin.  Something to be said for delayed gratification.

When I gardened when DD was quite small, she stated off by hanging upside down (her favorite position) from the arm holding her at the time. She "helped" as she grew older until we didn't get along so well. Now she does her own gardening and I am hoping for one or more little ones with whom to share. AM

My daughter had her own corner of the garden when she was 3, she grew radishes.  Since then she has never stopped.  When her and her husband purchased their house, they had a huge backyard.  It is now a huge garden.  She cans, dries and freezes all harvest season.

 When they were growing up,the children helped in the garden.  Now the grandchildren help when they visit over the summer, & youngest DD helps when she visits during the summer. Last summer, I drove up to her place & helped her a couple of times in her community garden plot. She bottled quite a bit of her own produce & is eating it this winter.

 This is cindys place when she needs to be alone I and mom just let her loose in there she has pictures she has taken in moms yard of birds and wildlife and flowers and other things I guess she kicks everyone out of the yard this is her domain.