10 of the Best Crops to Grow With Children

With gardening season upon us, every green thumb must ask themselves: What should I plant this year? And if you’re planning to involve children in your gardening process, you may be wondering the best way to get them involved, and keep them interested. According to HGTV, one of the best ways to occupy those short attention spans is to select plants that germinate and produce a crop quickly—and that require minimal watering and maintenance to survive.

Julia Watkins, creator of Simply Living Well and author of Gardening for Everyone: Growing Vegetables, Herbs, and More at Home agrees that “kids respond well to quick results.” Beyond that, she says, “If you watch children closely, they’ll show you what crops they like best. At my house, they gravitate towards plants that can be eaten fresh in the garden or ones that make planting and harvesting feel like play.” For a child, “pulling a potato out of the soil is like digging for buried treasures. Heaving a carrots from a pot, especially ones that are red or yellow or purple, feels like pulling a toy out of a goodie bag.”

Here are some of the easiest and most rewarding crops to grow with children.

Kids enjoy this cool season crop that does best in early spring or early autumn for a few reasons, not least of which is: relatively quick results. Sugar snap peas typically germinate in ten days and are ready to eat in less than two months. Kids love picking and munching on these sweet crunchers right off the vine. According to Watkins, “If you save a few pods, you can dry the seeds, store them in an airtight container, and plant them the following year, so your children learn first-hand the full cycle of a seed.”

The Lightning McQueen of garden crops, radishes are known as “springers” because they sprout so fast they seemingly “spring” from the earth. The red globes sprout a few days after being planted, and mature radishes are usually ready to be picked within 30 days (as close to instant gardening gratification as you can get). Their small footprint allows them to be planted around the borders of beds and in between taller plants. They grow through spring, summer, and fall, and can be planted in succession for a continuous supply. While they may not love the taste just yet, kids enjoy plucking them from the ground—and seeing their sometimes unexpected shapes and colors.

While the most common carrot is the bog-standard orange variety we see in the grocery store, many different sizes and hues exist. For a pop of color, kids can plant the Kaleidoscope variety that will yield red, yellow, white, orange and purple carrots. Smaller varieties, such as Babette, Romeo, Thumbelina and Parmex, will shorten the somewhat long growing season of carrots.

They grow well in deep pots—which, according to Watkins, creates a perfect opportunity to give a child their own small ecosphere to be in charge of. “If you give kids their own beds or pots to grow their crops, they’ll be more likely to take ownership of planting, growing, watering, tending and harvesting their plants.”

Fast, easy, and reliable, lettuce is a must-have in any children’s garden. Not only does it grow quickly and come in a variety of colors and textures, it gets kids in the habit of doing the (near) impossible: eating salads! After they choose the best-looking greens, they can proceed around the garden to pick their favorite toppings. Many leaf varieties reach maturity in 30 days, including mesclun mix, which can be harvested in less than a month. (Bonus if you make your own vinaigrette with wild herbs and edible flowers.)

What salad would be complete without tomatoes? While any tomato is an excellent and necessary garden component, kids love cherry tomatoes for their bite-sized shape, bright color, and taste. Their fruit-like sweetness can be picked and enjoyed directly off the vine. The fact that they’re prolific growers able to be harvested throughout the growing season only adds to their appeal.

With large seeds that make planting easy for small hands, green beans grow fast and abundantly. The bush variety grow quickly, yield large quantities, and, staying close to the ground, are easy for kids to harvest. (Kids also love the “snapping” sound beans make when they’re picked.)

By contrast, climbing “pole” beans coffer a different advantage: Fun. They can be grown around a “bean teepee” (made from bamboo supports) that provides the perfect shady “secret garden” in which children can hide, imagine, and play.

While pumpkins don’t offer speed (kids will have to wait until fall to see the fruits of their labor), they do offer large seeds for easy sowing, quick sprouting, a variety of colors, shapes, and sizes, and a valuable lesson in patience. Pumpkins can be started in small windowsill pots in early spring, and transferred outside as their vines grow. Over the growing season, kids can build a habit of regular watering and consistent care—and be rewarded with their very own fall gem for decorating, seed-roasting, painting, or carving (if they can bring themselves to actually cut the prize they worked so hard for).

Kids enjoy growing these sun-loving, nutritious tubers that can be mashed, boiled, hashed, fried, or loaded come harvest time. First off, it’s amazing to watch how the “eyes” (or tiny sprouts) all over an existing potato can be grown into countless new potatoes. They can be grown in rows, or in a sack. And you don’t have to stick to boring brown spuds. Potatoes can be grown in gold, red, purple, even blue. Who wants rainbow-colored french fries?

Have you ever watched young kids in a strawberry-picking patch? They’re beside themselves with excitement seeking and finding those “just right” berries, the perfect color and texture for plucking. After the thrill of finding a perfect red orb, there is the bliss of eating a fresh, sweet, organic berry straight off the runner. If you want an activity that will occupy a young child for seemingly hours (with no need for coaxing), plant strawberries. As perennials, they’ll come back year after year with little effort.

Adding a cheerful pop of color and range of creative uses to any children’s garden are edible flowers. Not only are they beautiful and fun to pick, they can be used fresh or dried to decorate cakes and cookies, or flavor drinks, salads, syrups, jellies, homemade butters, popsicles, and more. While typically low-maintenance, be careful to only grow from seeds as commercially-grown flowers are often unsafe to eat due to pesticide contamination. Kids can plant everything from violets, chamomile, and hibiscus to pansies, marigolds, and the very picture of childlike happiness: the sunflower. (Which germinates in a week and will likely be taller than your child—and you— by the end of summer.)