If you’re planning to do a lot of gardening with young ones this year, consider some of our most popular “kid’s sized” vegetables. These varieties are easy to grow and crank out prolific, tasty produce that take well to consistent harvesting by eager garden helpers. With this list, you’ll have something snackable in the garden every month of the growing season.
Mexican sour gherkin
If your family loves cucumbers, both Picolino cucumbers and Mexican sour gherkins should find a spot in your garden this year. Picolino are a prolific and crisp cocktail cucumber, harvested at just 4-5” long for maximum sweetness and crunch. Mexican sour gherkins are also known as “mouse melons” and their inch-long fruits resemble something out of a fairy tale. They have a tart, lemony flavor and firm bite that kids love. Both varieties produce long vines and tendrils, so offer plenty of support with a trellis and watch them climb up, up, and away. They could even grow on a little teepee. Remember that they also benefit from consistent harvesting, which make them perfect for a daily scavenger hunt to find the ripe fruits.
Lunchbox peppers are so named for their snackable size, maturing at just 2-3” long and coming in shades of yellow, orange and red. These peppers are super sweet, and their small size also encourages more prolific fruiting per sturdy plant. While perfect for fresh eating, lunchbox peppers do equally well sauteéd and stuffed.
There’s no better seed to sow with kids than radishes. Sown directly in the garden early in the spring and carefully thinned to 1-2”, radishes offer a relatively quick payoff of bright pink roots with a sweet, pleasantly peppery flavor. Watered adequately and harvested early, radishes can be seeded in the veggie garden all season long. Try a mix of French breakfast and cherry red varieties for a range of harvest times and colors.
Alongside your radish patch, set in some sprouting broccoli (also known as broccolini). It’s well known that broccoli is a favorite green with kiddos, and these sprouting types offer a “cut and come again” approach that is much more consistent and satisfying than waiting half the season for one full-sized crown. Broccolini are also more heat tolerant, although they’ll want plenty of water and decent soil. The sweet stems and florets are easily incorporated into mixed grills, crudité platters, and mixed into classic mac n’ cheese. These broccoli shoots are so sweet, they are also perfect to eat out of hand in the garden.
Baby Bear pumpkins mature to about half the size of a typical pie pumpkin, late in the season. They have very sturdy handles that make them appealing to children because they are easy to hold and don’t risk losing their stems. While they make excellent decorative pumpkins, Baby Bear has a sweet flesh that is perfect for pie making, and semi-hulless seeds that make a tasty roasted snack.
Of course, no children’s garden would be complete without cherry tomatoes, and Sungolds continue to win out with their bright orange color and candy-sweet flavor that kids can’t get enough of. Be sure to provide trellising and harvest consistently to prevent fruits from cracking. One plant will provide enough for snacks, but plant more for drying, freezing, canning, roasting or adding to salsa and sauces.
