Chaos Gardening by Accident, a guide to gardening with a two-year old (and an infant)

I have a two-year-old girl, the curious, bouncy kind that asks a gazillion questions and gets into everything. I also have a 6-month-old girl. My gardening this year has definitely suffered as a result, but I have learned a great deal about how to garden with an infant and a toddler. I’ll tell you how the season has gone so far with a two-year-old’s “help” and the lessons I learned along the way, then I’ll summarize my best tips for toddler gardening success.

I carefully selected my seeds online, in the dead of winter, intending to get a head start with them. I even bought a mini greenhouse kit that was on sale at our local farm store. It was about the size of a closet and had little green metal pipes with plastic connectors, small metal shelves, and a plastic tarp for a cover with a zippered door. My husband, Carson, set it up for me. He wanted to position it so that it would be protected from the wind, between the house and the garage. I liked it by the garden for the sunlight. In the end, he put it where I asked. He even beefed it up with extra stakes and hay bales and planted salad greens directly in the ground inside it.

I got some planters, and Timberlynn enjoyed helping me fill them with dirt from our compost pile. I decided to pre-wet them before planting tomatoes and such in them. So, after spending 5 minutes trying to convince Timberlynn to stop overfilling my planters. She finally put her trowel down and left the dirt pile for the garden hose. She insisted on helping with the hose. Before I could convince her that she had used enough water, all the planters were a muddy mess. I then realized there was a lot of clay in the soil we used, so they weren’t draining like they should. I decided to purchase some potting mix from the store for my other planters and let the ones we had already done dry out.

In the meantime, we had a storm, and my little greenhouse blew over. I probably should have listened to Carson.

After that, I just bought a bunch of garden plants from our local grocery stores. I planted some with Timberlynn, and she did pretty well, an occasional “gentle” and showing her how to handle plants after she was too rough was all she needed. I just had to repeat that with each plant we did. Carson planted whatever we didn’t get to and also planted some seeds.

From our earlier garden, we got several rounds of salad, some peas, as well as a few zucchini and yellow squash before the squash bugs discovered them, with almost no care after planting. Our early to midsummer was so wet we didn’t need to water, and the few times I did try to weed, I gave up as soon as Timberlynn would try to help by picking the “weeds” I must’ve missed (my poor plants!) The first time I wanted to teach her not to pull up the plants with the weeds, she became even more obsessed with picking the plants, thinking they were easy weeds to pull. She didn’t really see the difference. I quickly redirected, telling her we were done with the wedding and taking her out of the garden.

I decided to plant all the flower and herb seeds I had saved for someday when I could make the “perfect“ spot. I decided anything was better than sitting in the seed packets doing nothing. As a reward, I would buy myself new seeds once my seeds were used up. Timberlynn helped me scatter the seeds in a couple of beds in front of the house. It took all my focus and redirection skills to get her to broadcast them in the beds, not outside, but we managed and had lots of beautiful sprouts within a couple of weeks. Unfortunately, the next week was all day (10-4) VBS at church for 4 days (I was helping lead it), and it was upper 90s with no rain, so I did not have energy for watering that week, and all our sprouts died.

Since then, it’s been a relatively dry summer, and the only plants that continued growing were the many cherry tomatoes I had bought, hoping that half of them would survive. I think all of them did, though, and a couple of Roma tomatoes. By the way, if you make tomato soup with candy cherry tomatoes, it will be very sweet; you’ve been forewarned.

I tried setting up the pool for Timberlynn to play in while I gardened, but the baby, Wrangler, wanted to cluster feed, so I ended up sitting in some nearby shade nursing while she played in the pool.

Last week Timberlynn and I reclaimed our little garden plot from the weeds; we spent about an hour outside and she played while I weeded. The next day we planted a bunch of cool weather seeds for a fall garden. Peas and cucumbers we sprinkled in two messy rows along side some panels for future climbing support. Kale, lettuce, and baby bok choy, were all sprinkled in another patch for easy salad picking access (hopefully). The rest of the bed was sprinkled in radishes. We had a whole bunch of radish seeds in a plastic bulk pepper shaker and I let her shake them out while I picked her up and swung her back and forth over the whole garden area to be planted. She laughed so hard when we did that part, it made my heart happy.

I looked up “chaos gardening” and realized it’s pretty much what I have been doing all summer, but accidentally. Basically, you sprinkle a bunch of seeds and let them grow wherever they happen to land, and then let them fend for themselves. Whatever dies, they don’t worry about, and whatever lives well, that’s great.

This got me thinking about people who say they must have a black thumb because they kill all their houseplants, and people who consider themselves gardeners. I realized the main difference in the people I know is that those who identify as gardeners don’t let a dead plant slow down their progress; they simply replace it while learning what they can from it. It’s the one thing I wish I did more of this summer, replanting.

Best tips for gardening with a toddler and a baby:

• Avoid gardening between 11:00 AM and 4:00 PM (unless you have a shaded garden), it’s just too hot and too easy for babies to get sunburned during these hours. The baby has only gotten a very minor sunburn once, and it was when I gardened during this period of the day.
• A baby carrier is a must for gardening, that way you actually have arms free to do things.
• If you have a nursing baby in a carrier, wear a nursing-friendly shirt and bra so you don’t have to pull the bottom of your shirt up through the carrier to feed the baby. It’s more convenient and more modest. (Don’t ask me how I know.)
• Loosen up and have fun, don’t worry about perfect spacing or even perfect depth, embrace the chaos of gardening with a toddler, and let them help plant.
• If you make it fun, they’ll love gardening and be asking to go do it. Timberlynn has gotten into my seeds, opened the zucchini pack, and sprinkled them on the floor, saying, “Look, mommy!” I told her good job and that we can plant them outside. Hearing that, she happily picked them off the kitchen floor for me. (I did put up the rest of the seeds out of reach, though.)
• Replace plants as they die, either with seeds or plants you bought. I would prioritize this over weeding. I would also prioritize mulching; the less weeding you have to do with toddlers, the better.
• Be patient and redirect, redirect, redirect -especially when weeding. Take a break from weeding if it’s overwhelming or if little fingers are grasping all your plants. Eventually, they’ll learn the difference between plants and weeds, but we’re not there yet for two-year-olds -at least not in my experience.
• Let them water the plants either with a kid’s watering can or with a spray nozzle on a hose. I recommend getting the kind that gives spray options, so you can set it to a mist or gentle showers, so that way it doesn’t matter if they get carried away with the water
• Let them help harvest and show them what’s good to eat and what’s not to eat. Teach them to only eat something if you say it’s okay. Timberlynn loves tomatoes and blackberries and has enjoyed helping pick them. With constant supervision and much coaching during the summer, she doesn’t try to harvest rhubarb; she asks if she wants some because she knows part of it is bad, and Momma or Poppa has to pick it. She also asks me now if she sees a new plant she thinks is food.
• Keeping things in the garden that they can play with if they lose interest, and you want to keep gardening, is a good idea.
• Wheelbarrow rides are a must! It’s so much fun for Timberlynn, and I enjoy it when she comes running up to me for a ride.

“In the morning sow thy seed, and in the evening withhold not thine hand: for thou knowest not whether shall prosper, either this or that, or whether they both shall be alike good.”

Ecclesiastes 11:6