Celebrating Earth Day the Family Way: Gardening Your Way to a Greener Life

This summer marks our third year of planting and tending to a family garden. We’ve grown from a small patch of land behind our California home to a nice-sized fenced in section of our lawn in which we’ve planted everything from tomatoes to watermelons. 

While my girls are great about eating – well, I should say trying - all vegetables we put on their plates, not all children are. The good news? The American Gardening Association says that 9 percent of kids who grow their own vegetables will eat them! 

Best of all, gardening creates a perfect way to live green. Planting and eating your own food cuts down on the cost of gas to and from the grocery store and on the foods that you eat. Composting is a wonderful way to get rid of food wastes and it can be done regardless of the amount of room you have. And when you grow your own food you know exactly where it is coming from and how it has been grown. 

So, how can you create a greener life through gardening?

1. Start composting. You don’t have to purchase a large compost bin to begin. TD Bank’s real estate green strategy office Jacquelynn Henke says, “When you peel your fruits and vegetables, don’t throw away the remains; you can use these and other trash particles to start a compost pile.” Over time, this will create rich soil for planting. We use a small bag upstairs that we fill and carry down to a small box next to our garage every day or two. In this box we’ve put soil from our garden. We mix the soil with items like eggshells and coffee grinds and, after some time, take that soil out to our garden and bury it into the rest of the soil.

2. Plant the fruit and vegetables you eat most regularly. Our garden contains those veggies and fruits we love the most: watermelon, cantaloupe, tomatoes, peppers, and an assortment of squash. While the girls are not crazy about all of the items, particularly zucchini, we found last year that if we grew it and let them pick it, they would eat it at dinnertime. Gardening creates the perfect environment for introducing new foods to your children. When they see that the work they put into the garden turns into something they can actually consume they are more likely to try it.

3. Let the kids help. Gardening is such a wonderful opportunity for family time. We take care of the land throughout the year by weeding, planting, watering, and planning. This year the girls each created a list of the items they most wanted in the garden. Those lists hung on the refrigerator until we went to the store to purchase the seeds; then my daughters brought their lists and matched up what they had written with packages of seeds. Now, as the buds push through the soil, they are watching their plants grow.