Sourcing cheap plants for my 3 year old

Sorry, but alarm bells are ringing now.

If you grow peas and encourage the little one to enjoy delicious peas straight from the pod, but you also grow sweet peas, which also produce pods but full of toxic peas, is that not a bit risky?

 

FLip I didnt know that! ThAts the problem with being a novice. Thank u so much anything else dangerous on my list?

Anyone want some sweepea seed?

 

I think there's a few things on the list I wouldn't exactly want to eat, but you can't rule out everything inedible I don't think, because I can't imagine you want to give out the message that it is ok to eat any part of any plant. The pea vs sweet pea bit is slightly different just because pea pods are distinctive enough in appearance such that in the mind of a 3 year old, a pea pod is a pea pod and can be nothing else, I can't imagine many 3 years olds differentiating between the edible ones and the toxic ones.

Sweet peas pods don't fill out as much as regular peas, and the peas in them are much smaller, so to us grown ups they are sufficiently different to tell the difference, but at the same time, they do just look like immature pea pods.

 

I dont encourage my daughter to eat any plant and she is fully supervised as I have said before. As a novice I know not to have foxvloves amd daffs in my garden.

 

Thank u so much shiney I will give her a bucket and some gloves and we cam take them over te park
Does copper tape work?

 

Sorry I didn't mean it quite how it might have sounded. I didn't mean for a second that you encourage your little one to eat any plant, I just meant that, as you've said, you need to teach kiddies that not everything in the garden can be eaten. My point was just that although lots of plants are not exactly edible, most are not toxic enough to be a real danger, and you can't possibly ensure that nothing in the garden is toxic.

I agree with you about the likes of foxglove. That one is a bit too toxic to take any chances with I think, although I suspect many will disagree, as it is a very common native wild flower yet still cases of poisoning seem to be rare.

The peas vs sweet peas thing is slightly different just because like I said before, to a very young mind, a pea pod is a pea pod. I think a young kid would be more likely to accidentally eat a sweet pea pod than the leaf of some other plant.

I've just thought of something, total as an aside. Many kids hate leafy veg and it can be a chore to get them to eat it. I wonder if that's evolution's way of making sure they only eat the more easily identifiable foods until they gain enough experience to correctly identify which leaf is food and which is poison.

 

http://apps.rhs.org.uk/advicesearch/Profile.aspx?pid=524

Theres the rhs plant poisons list that should help me out

Yes I thimk your right about the evolutionary point

 

MY daughters efforts today

 

Clever girl little Chimney

Don't forget the cress in eggshells for the kitchen window sill

 

little chimneyrosegarden had great fun planting some "adaidiot" (aqualigia) seeds this morn and some "munster lavender" lavender munstead wood. good girl for trying to learn plant names

 

How about getting little one started with sprouting seeds? Not only can they be grown all year round, but, they can be added to sandwiches, stir fries, salads.

A 'crop' can be ready in as little as 3-5 days which would suit the impatient nature of little ones plus, you're guaranteed *no* disappointments in success rate. They can be eaten as sprouted seeds, or, if left to grow a little longer, as micro salad.

My old one got lost when we moved, so, I invested in a new one from Homebase

On that same theme, if a supermarket has one of the "living salad" trays reduced, I snap it up, fill and washing up bowl with compost and divide the living salad into that - extends the crop no end.

 

that looks amazing. thanx

 

Its nice to see someone encouraging their child to take up growing some plants and edible plants as these days with the cost of veg and fruit its nice to pick your own

 

How about marigolds? They're easy to grow and it's great watching people's faces when your kids eat the blooms.

I hope you'll grow some down the side of a jam jar so the little ones can watch the roots:


Beans in cotton wool.

It's also fun to pop slugs into a bucket of salted water. They dissolve and then you can pour them down the drain.