Grow a Taco or Pizza Garden with Kids

Growing plants with children has so many benefits- learning plant life cycles, learning where food comes from, and of course learning some responsibility along the way! Growing a kid's theme garden can really connect children with their garden patch. 

Last year, we explored growing Rainbow and Pollinator gardens. 

This year we will investigate themed vegetable gardens: a Taco garden and a Pizza garden!

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We're also teaming up with Renee's Garden Seeds once again this year for a seed giveaway. At the end of this post, enter to win 4 packages of seeds including tomatoes, peppers and herbs. Giveaway runs from April 5th, 2016 to April 11th, 2016. Note: Renee's Garden Seeds provided the prizes for this giveaway, however, I was not compensated in any other way for this post, the ideas and opinions here are my own.

Growing a Taco Garden

Garden Peppers! ©SBF 2015

You can get started growing a taco garden in pots, a small garden bed or in a portion of a larger garden. What can you grow in a taco garden? There are a wide variety of tomatoes and peppers to start. You might also want to try herbs like cilantro, or grow some scallions or onions. Lettuce is easy to direct sow into the garden and it isn't too difficult to keep your crop growing throughout the summer. What other vegetables can you put on a taco? Get creative!

You can make some salsa right out of your garden with this kid's salsa recipe from Weelicious. Although growing corn and grinding it for your own tortillas might seem a little ambitious, this can definitely lead to an interesting discussion about where the other ingredients for a taco come from! You might also want to check out the new picture book, So You Want to Grow a Taco? by Bridget Heos to explore the idea further.

If you are interested in growing your taco garden in pots, you might try some of the container varieties from Renee's Garden such as: Heirloom Stupice or Super Bush.

 

Herbs are easy to grow on a patio or even indoors. For a taco garden you might try some cilantro, like this heirloom variety.

 

There are also many nice varieties of lettuce that can be grown directly in the garden, or in a container. I really like Sweetie Baby Romaine and Renee's Baby Leaf Blend.

For more varieties of Renee's Garden seeds that can be grown in pots, check out this listing.

Lettuce mix growing in a container. ©SBF 2015

Growing a Pizza Garden

Dutch oven pizza! ©SBF 2015

What is a pizza made of? What can you grow in your pizza garden? Tomatoes and oregano for sauce, basil, peppers and onions for toppings. If you have a large garden you probably have other items that would taste yummy on there, like eggplant, or even some fried zucchini!

Basil growing at the base of tomato plants. ©SBF 2015

Just as you can grow many of your "taco plants" in the garden, or in pots, the same goes for your pizza toppings. Basil and oregano grow wonderfully in pots or out under and among the tomatoes in the garden. These herbs have the added benefit of keeping some tomato pests away!

You might try Italian Genovese or Large Leaf Cameo basil.

Roma tomatoes (top) and gold nuggets (bottom) ©SBF 2015

Roma tomatoes are great for making tomato sauce. Try this pizza sauce recipe with the kids. You might try planting this Roma Sauce Tomato variety to make some yummy pizza sauce.

For further learning and discussion about growing pizza ingredients, investigate So You Want to Grow a Pizza? by Bridget Heos.

To get you started with your taco or pizza garden, we're giving away 4 sets of 4 packages of Renee's Garden Seeds. Using the Rafflecopter box below you can enter to win some tomato, pepper and herb seeds for your garden. Later this summer, the winners will be asked to share how their gardens fared this year! The giveaway runs from April 5th, 2016- April 11th, 2016. Winners will be notified via e-mail and announced on the blog. Good luck and have fun gardening!

a Rafflecopter giveaway