Gardening With Kids
My kids love to garden! They look forward to every spring when plant starts begin to show up in stores. Each year we plant snap peas (our backyard snap peas taste so much better than store bought!), kale, cherry tomatoes (recommend the Sweet Million and Sun Gold varieties), cilantro, parsley, and basil. And we also have perennial blueberries, raspberries, rhubarb, chives, an artichoke, and rosemary in our yard. This year we added radishes (which are a great one to plant from seed with kids because they sprout so fast), broccoli with a lot of success, and some containers of strawberries and something called a Hula Berry from Costco. In the past, we have also had a lot of luck with mint and spinach.
Sam runs outside as soon as he gets up each morning to check on his “crops” and religiously waters his plants with very few parental reminders. We get daily updates from the kids on the number of blossoms on the plants and how many new green fruits have appeared. And Sam scours the neighborhood during our daily walks for plant varieties we do not yet have, and he decides we need to try. Sam even has a dance move he calls the “Kale Dance”.
While I love having fresh herbs that I can just grab from the backyard, admittedly, as a result of Sam and Emma’s gardening, our backyard is not the beautifully manicured and landscaped yard of my dreams. With garden stakes being continually added at precarious angles; netting to protect berries from birds; and a plastic flamingo that Ryan and Sam use as a scarecrow to scare away other birds. This year in our garden, we have “Kale Town”, a raised bed dedicated to multiple kale starts and Sam and Emma have named one gangly kale plant “King Kale” that magically regrew from last year and is still going strong.
To me, however, the best part of gardening with my kids (and the reason I put with a plastic pink flamingo in my backyard) is that Sam and Emma seem to eat whatever they grow often straight out of the garden. Chives, parsley, mint, cilantro, rosemary, kale, tomatoes, and snap peas are consumed by the handful and we have yet to have a raspberry make it into the house. My 3-year old nephew Joe (who adorably thinks Sam and Emma walk on water) now also comes over and eats chives straight off our backyard plant. All our kids smell great and think our reaction to their breath is hysterical!
Here are two of our go to family-friendly recipes that use produce from our backyard garden: Kale Pesto and Spaghetti with Snap Peas and Prosciutto.
Our son Sam loves pesto and the following homemade kale variety is his favorite. Ryan and he make it several times throughout the late spring and summer. It’s a great sauce to keep in your refrigerator for a quick addition to pasta or to throw on meat for the grill.
KALE PESTO
INGREDIENTS
- 2 to 3 cloves garlic
- 3 cups packed kale
- ¾ cup toasted walnuts
- 2 tablespoons lemon juice (about 1 lemon)
- ¾ teaspoon fine-grain sea salt
- ¼ teaspoon ground pepper
- Red pepper flakes, optional (if you want to add some kick)
- ¼ cup extra-virgin olive oil (more if desired)
- Entirely optional (unless you live in our house in which case you double): ⅓ cup grated Parmesan cheese
DIRECTIONS:
- In a food processor, add the peeled garlic cloves and process until the garlic is minced.
- Add the kale, walnuts, lemon juice, salt and pepper.
- Turn on the food processor and drizzle in the oil. Process until the pesto reaches your desired consistency, stopping to scrape down the sides as necessary.
- Taste and add more lemon, salt or pepper if necessary.
- You can thin out the pesto with more oil, but if you’re serving with pasta, keep in mind that you can also thin it out with reserved pasta cooking water.
Recipe Credit: Cookie and Kate
Ryan and I love the following pasta recipe and have been making it since before we had kids (I found a copy of the recipe in my email that I sent to a friend back in 2011!) and before we had snap peas growing our garden. The dish only gets better when you use homegrown snap peas.
SPAGHETTI WITH SNAP PEAS AND PROSCIUTTO
INGREDIENTS
- Kosher salt
- 12 ounces spaghetti
- 1/3 cup white wine
- 1 clove garlic, smashed
- 2 wide strips lemon zest
- 5 tablespoons unsalted butter, thinly sliced
- 3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
- Freshly ground pepper
- 6 heaping cups baby spinach
- 1/2 pound sugar snap peas (about 2 cups), halved
- 1/4 pound prosciutto, torn into pieces
- 1/4 cup roughly chopped fresh parsley
- 2 to 4 ounces parmesan cheese, shredded or shaved
DIRECTIONS
- Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil. Add the spaghetti and cook as the label directs.
- Bring the wine, garlic and lemon zest to a simmer in a large skillet over medium-high heat.
- Gradually whisk in the butter, then the olive oil, until thickened.
- Add 1 teaspoon salt, and pepper to taste.
- Add the spinach and cook until wilted, about 2 minutes.
- Add the snap peas and cook until tender, 2 minutes. (Its better to undercook, you would crispy snap peas not limp!)
- Discard the garlic and lemon zest.
- Reserve 1/4 cup cooking water, then drain the spaghetti and add to the skillet.
- Add 1 to 2 tablespoons cooking water and 1 teaspoon salt; toss, adding more cooking water as needed to loosen.
- Divide among plates and top with the prosciutto, parsley and pecorino.
Recipe Credit: Food Network
As I was planning this blog post over the past weekend, it was fun to see this “Helping Kids Grow” article published in the Seattle Times’ Pacific NW insert reinforcing the benefits of kids and gardening. The article contains some fun ideas for activities you can do with kids in the garden.
