Growing Food and Kids

For my little boys, nothing makes gardening more fun than having cool tools to use. And while we’ve gone through our share of plastic shovels, rakes and hoes, a recent discovery of kids’ garden gear from Melissa & Doug has brought my kids’ gardening style up a notch. Even better, these tools are much more durable than most of their counterparts on the market, which is pretty important when there are rough-and-tumble boys (or girls) involved. 

At our house, we have two sets of the gloves pictured here, one “Happy Giddy Hoe” and one “Happy Giddy Rake.” While we spend a lot of time looking for missing gloves, when they’re in the right place at the right time, the kids love wearing them out to the garden (especially when Daddy is wearing his own garden gloves to cut prickly okra).

The rake and the hoe get lots of use in the garden, in the backyard, anywhere the kids see dirt. Because they’re made of metal rather than plastic, they’re much less likely to get chewed up by the neighbors’ dogs or get broken by rough use. Ours are covered in dirt but they’re still cute. And I’m feeling confident they’ll still be in one piece this fall, so they’ll come in handy when the leaves start falling.

Our Melissa & Doug garden gear came from Learning Express, but the same tools (and many others I’m sure) are available from a number of retailers, including Amazon.com and Toys R Us. (And no, this message isn’t endorsed; I just really like this gear!)

What garden gear do your kids like to use?

Photo credits: Melissa & Doug