Easy to grow vegetables for kids

My 5 yr old wants to grow tomatotes. I am notorious for killing everything that I touch. Can you help me find something that will grow for her in spite of me??? Help!!

Radishes or Leaf Lettuce seems to be the easiest for me. They both sprout fast and you can eat them in 30 days (or less if your impatient). Both like cool temps though so get them planted quick.

Of course if neither of you like lettuce or radishes... maybe you should give the tomatoes a try. They have a great guide to growing them over on the tomato forum. I've never grown one before last summer and I have far too many of them growing now...

I would also suggest radishes. I grow them every year just because of the ease and enjoyment!

Cherry tomatoes would do great, they grow without much fuss. My GK's love picking the tomatoes and watching them grow. Your 5 yr. old will love them

I concur with allysgram... cherry tomatoes are great for kids. You seem to have a higher zone so Moon and Stars Watermelon are a big hit with kids. Also baby bear sunflowers are fun for kids. Good luck and let us know what you pick so we can use them for our kids too!!

sunflowers are good beans to like a bush kind well do if you dont very little room

sugar snap peas, they grow and climb well, and can be picked and eaten directly from the vine! (although they prefer cooler weather)

I can't keep my kids out of the pea patch, (or the strawberry patch)

some of the brightly coloured sunflowers are lovely in vases.....there are so many sunflower varieties suitable for cutting......

Corn is so easy. Any kind of beans are really east too. If you grown corn just get a fake owl, scarecrow or some other type of fake predator animal to scare away those crows and squirrels.

I do like the idea of beans--when a kid eats a bean, they can see the seed, and the seeds bear a good resemblance to what they're used to eating, too. Corn and peas are the same way too, I guess. And beans and corn can go in about now, too-- cherry tomatoes as well, so the timing would be perfect! I'm in 9a too, and I know it'll be a little bit before it cools down enough to try any of the cool weather crops.

My kids (2 and 4 years old) just helped me plant corn and beans and seemed to find it fascinating!

Yeah, corn and beans are not too small either. Very easy to plant, especially if you use trays before putting them in the ground.

We just started transplants for a bunch of things, and for small kids I do *not* recommend lettuce seeds. Very hard to handle, even for me! Broccoli seeds were tough, too, although my 4-year-old did pretty well. I think my vote still stands: beans, corn and cherry tomatoes.

Beans and cherry tomatoes for sure...try the snake beans...children are really amazed at the really long pods (great in stir fry) or the purple ones that turn green when you cook them.

It's a little late now, but my kids have loved helping me with pumpkins and giant sunflowers. Both get so huge that they feel very rewarded by their efforts. I hope to harvest and roast sunflower seeds this fall, which they like to eat. And of course they'll each get their own home-grown pumpkin (with their name carved into the skin) for Halloween. They've also enjoyed tomatoes and peas. Have fun!

Yeah, very rewarding for the kids. The small seeds take a while to get anywhere. With seeds like pumpkins, sunflower, corn they see them spout up with first leaves within a week at most.

there's always the summer squashes, zuchinni different colours, shapes and sizes. You can also get little plastic moulds to fix over the growing squashes, to shape them into hearts, corn cobs or elf faces.

The seeds of the squashes are large, too perfect for little fingers to plant. They sprout and grow quickly.