Picky Eaters? The Top 10 Kid-Friendly Vegetables for Your Garden
Feeding kids at home can be a challenge. Sure, they might seem to thrive on mac and cheese and peanut butter sandwiches, but you’re sure to want to feed them the occasional vegetable as well. Unfortunately, it’s the rare child that willingly eats Brussels sprouts without a fuss.
You don’t need to give up on healthy eating completely with your kids. Growing fruits and vegetables at home is a proven way to get picky eaters to experiment with new flavors, and you’ll likely find that they’re willing to help in the garden as well.
Some fruits and vegetables have a better track record with kids than others. Here are ten of the best options for getting picky eaters excited about produce.
The Peppers is a plant that produces bright red pepper vegetables. This chili pepper is commonly used for cooking in places such as the Southern U.S. and Central America. Most are moderately spicy, though because there are so many variants, the spice level can vary dramatically. Cayenne powder is also a popular seasoning product made from Peppers plants.
While most assume that the Sweetpotato is a potato, it is not considered nightshade. However, sweet potatoes and potatoes both belong to the order of Solanales. Its culinary use is wide and can be fried, baked or boiled.
Squashes are vining plants, many of which are commonly cultivated as a food crop for their fruit and seeds. This group includes squashes, gourds, and pumpkins. The fruits are good sources of vitamins and nutrients such as niacin and folic acid, and their flowers attract important pollinators such as bees.
Solanum lycopersicum is an annual or perennial herbaceous vine native to Central and South America that produces a large, juicy, edible fruit known as Tomato. Today there are over 10000 cultivated varieties. Although tomato is the world’s most popular vegetable, botanically it is a fruit.
Carrot (Daucus carota subsp. sativus) is the domestic version of its wild relative. This ubiquitous vegetable is closely related to parsley, fennel, and dill. The orange root can be eaten cooked or raw. The Carrot is self-fertile and is pollinated by flies and beetles, who use its flowers as a food source.
Field pumpkin are most commonly seen as decorations throughout the autumn and during the Halloween holiday, when they are carved and used as traditional jack-o’-lanterns. While the taste of Field pumpkin flesh may not be ideal, eating the seeds after toasting them with a bit of salt can be a delicious treat!
Garden pea (Pisum sativum) is an annual vegetable that makes a hardy, cold weather crop. Also known as the green pea or garden pea, it grows from 1 to 1.5 feet tall. Peapods form after the first year and both peas and pods are edible and can be eaten cooked or raw. Excellent in stir fry, tender tips, called pea shoots, are also edible.
Cucumber (Cucumis sativus) is a creeping vine native to South Asia. It has a long history of cultivation – mentions of its use are found in various ancient scripts, including the Bible, Epic of Gilgamesh and Pliny the Elder’s “Natural History“. Today, Cucumber is one of the most widely cultivated vegetable species in the world.
Wild radish is a plant that is entirely edible, with a flavor that is described as peppery and earthy. The leaves and greens can be consumed boiled or in salads, while the roots can be cooked and consumed after the tough outer peel is removed.
The Garden strawberry (Fragaria ananassa) is an edible plant species. Each plant produces a quart of strawberries during the growing season. The Garden strawberry fruit becomes ripe during the early spring and summer months. The Garden strawberry was first cultivated during the middle of the eighteenth century in France. It’s a hybrid between a North American strawberry (F. virginiana) and a Chilean strawberry (F. chiloensis).