The Pizza Garden and Other Food-y Ideas for Kids

Our family is counting down the days until summer arrives, and with it, far more time spent outdoors! If you’re looking for ways to engage your children in creation care this summer, why not do it through food?

Here are some fun and tasty ways to spur on simple, satisfying, and sustainable lifestyles with your family as we enter the growing season.

The Pizza Garden Seed Kit from Interfaith Power & Light

My daughter and I spent part of the past weekend sowing seeds from our Pizza Garden Seed Collection from Interfaith Power & Light into egg cartons filled with soil to get ready for our first attempt at raised garden beds this year.

This great collection of seeds includes heirloom, organic, and non-GMO varieties of basil, oregano, and thyme; sweet peppers; bunching onions; spinach; tomatillo; yellow pear tomato; and cayenne hot pepper… many of the necessary ingredients to make yourself some homemade pizza once the harvest is ready.

What better way to cultivate a love of the earth and a connection to the soil that helps produce the food we need to thrive than through our family’s favorite food—pizza!

Plant a “Giving Garden”

Image: Marcus Spiske

Even though I come from a long line of farmers, I have to admit ignorance when it comes to designing and planting garden beds. 

The Internet delivered again with this excellent resource from Gardeners.com!

We are going to supplement our Pizza Garden pack with some other vegetables of choice. Gardeners.com helped us determine how many raised beds we will need to install. (They also have quite a catalog of products to help you make it happen. If you’re like us and aren’t the best at DIY, these kits make all the difference.) 

Their pre-planned gardens are thematically organized and offer clear and delightfully illustrated outlines to show just how many plants will fit in a 3×6 plot, whether it’s a raised bed or in-ground garden.

They even have a layout for a “giving garden,” which includes produce that you can harvest late and donate to your local food pantry in one trip. Give your kids the gift of a green thumb and generous spirit! #winning!

Pick-a-Snack

When kids have a hand at growing their own food, they are more likely to choose healthy snacks and get their minimum daily requirements of fruits and vegetables in the process. More and more research is showing that this kind of hands-on experience cultivates curiosity about different types of foods and encourages children to try different things.

Imagine your children going out to the garden to pick sugar snap peas and cherry tomatoes straight off the vine, instead of hovering in front of the pantry looking for potato chips. This could be our reality, folks. It isn’t just an agrarian fantasy!

Get Creative with Food Preparation

Image: Marisol Binetez

The abundance a garden can produce can also spur on creativity around the kitchen. How many different ways can you find to use zucchini?! Invite your children into the meal prep process. 

You can keep it simple with picked snacks and salads fresh from your garden, or challenge each other to find new ways to use your produce—smoothies, juices, frozen treats, canned goods, pickles, and more could all come from your gardening efforts, not to mention having all of those fresh ingredients on-hand for whatever meal you’re making.

And don’t forget to bless your friends and neighbors with whatever you’ve grown, too.

Plant Spiritual Truths in Fertile Minds

While your children help you sow and water seeds, you can sow and water their spiritual lives, as well. Gardening provides endless spiritual metaphors and analogies, not to mention mounds opportunities to connect with foundational stories from the Bible, from the garden of Eden to the garden of Gethsemane, to Mary thinking Jesus was the gardener outside his tomb.

What spiritual truths does gardening offer, you ask?

• Patience and Persistence: Just like plants take time to grow, many things in life require patience and persistence. When seeds don’t sprout immediately and when fruit doesn’t just pop up overnight, you can encourage your children to keep nurturing their garden—good things often take time.
• Resilience and Growth: Plants face challenges like weather changes, pests, and diseases, but they adapt and grow stronger as a result. This is true for children and adults, too. A garden gives us an opportunity to renew our faith and hope, that in the face of difficulties, we’re able to persevere in the Lord’s strength and care.
• Interconnectedness and Dependency: All of life is interconnected, and your little garden is the perfect micro-ecosystem to showcase these truths. God made all of nature reliant on each other, just as we rely on our relationship with nature, with each other, and with God for a flourishing life.
• Life Cycles and Seasons: The life cycle of the garden can help our children understand the seasons of life, transitions, and changes that are all part of our own lives. It serves as an apt metaphor for the cycle of birth, death, and resurrection that is central to the Christian narrative.
• Beauty in Diversity: You can celebrate the diversity of plants in the garden and use it to teach children to appreciate the beauty in all of God’s creatures, regardless of their differences.
• Nourishment and Gratitude: There’s nothing like watching plants grow and produce fruits seemingly with no help from us to expand our sense of wonder and gratitude. Explain to your children how gardening provides us with nourishment and sustenance, and encourage them to develop a sense of gratitude for the food we grow. You can say grace in the garden and at the dining room table.
• Mindfulness and Presence: So much of our daily lives are simultaneously disconnected and frenetic, but in the garden, our sense of time and space expand. Invite your children to be fully present and mindful while working in the garden, focusing on the sensations of touching the soil, smelling the flowers, and listening to the sounds of nature. This rootedness will help your children to dwell in the present moment, aware of the natural world that God made, enlarging their sense of awe.
• Harmony and Balance: The garden ecosystem needs harmony and balance—too much water, and the plants will drown; too much sun and the plants will wilt, for example—each plant, insect, and organism plays a vital role. We have our own parts to play in the ecosystem of our lives, too. You can use the garden as an apt metaphor for the body of Christ, showing your children their place in the grand kingdom of God.

Whether you plant a single herb or a sprawling acre of produce this year, I hope you’re able to find a way to make a small thing grow.