We live in an apartment but community gardens are abundant in this city, and so this year we must confront the grim reality of gardening with our small boy. When you Google “toddlers gardening,” you get all kinds of cutesy suggestions from people with screen names like “mummykins” – such un-doable things! And all of them so twee!
And I read these things and think that I could teach my small person to participate and be productive, and then he just wants to rub dirt in his eyes and eat rocks. This is not good for morale – I don’t like wondering if there’s something wrong with him because he is still wild and unpredictable, and he doesn’t like when I yell at him to STOP SWINGING THE EFFING RAKE AROUND.
Every season we learn something new.
This season, someone might get impaled with a rake.
Do you garden with little people? How do you get them involved? And, more importantly, how do you prevent them from ingesting compost? I feel like there should be a simple answer, and yet, so often I find myself trying to scrape manure off a uvula.
There are plenty of reasons to leave them indoors when the rakes come out … but if they’re bigger, you can trick them into weeding because their tiny hands are great for that!
I hope he enjoys it – we’re going to integrate picnics, because anything with food is doubly enjoyable.
These are all the reasons I’ve yet to garden with my small people… and they’re not even so small anymore, so perhaps it’s high time…
But, your boy will love the experience of it all – hanging out with his mum in the dirt – that’s the best kind of fun there is. (And I guess a little dirt won’t kill them. Or A LOT of dirt, either…) 🙂