Are you and your children setting new year resolutions for 2022? Stuck for ideas? If you have a garden in your yard then you’re in luck! A backyard garden can serve as great inspiration for worthy goals that will serve your household and community alike in the year ahead.
3 Great Gardening Goals That Your Family Can Set for 2022 and Beyond
1. Grow a More Biodiverse Garden
Your backyard garden was likely designed to suit the tastes and nutritional needs of your household. There are also aesthetic considerations, which is why you may have integrated certain flowering perennials. However, like with most household gardeners, you have probably not considered biodiversity when designing the garden. Considering biodiversity gives you of the opportunity to provide vital ecosystem functions such as soil fertilization, nutrient recycling, pest and disease regulation, erosion control and crop and tree pollination. Integrating biodiversity provides for all of this, and will ensure that your plants enjoy the microbial genetic resources necessary for food production. Subsequently pollinators and your household will enjoy a diverse and balanced diet. Share our guide to promoting biodiversity in your family’s backyard garden with your kids, and let them lead the way.
2. Turn It Into a Small Family Business
Want to talk about sustainability? Beyond feeding your family with nutritious food, you can also teach your kids about true self-sustenance by leveraging your garden to create a small business.
The most direct way to do so, it to sell some of your harvest (fruits, vegetables, herbs) at a local farmers market. You may also look at other ways to turn your produce into hot commodities, including crop byproducts such as homemade sauces and spices that can be bottled/packaged and sold at the same local market or via a community yard sale. You can even help your children set-up a makeshift booth in the neighborhood. Think of it as an updated lemonade stand! If you have a small garden and “larger scale” production (so to speak) is not viable, your kids can at least used some of their harvest to produce self-bottled or packaged sauces/spices and give them to friends and family members to test out. Who knows, they may enjoy it so much that they’ll come begging for more.
3. Use Some of Your Harvest to Help Feed Those in Need
One of the most popular new year resolutions for 2021 is to give back to the community by supporting those in need. While financial contributions certainly help, your kids can really get involved by growing and harvesting nutritious food from your garden, and donating it to local food banks that accept perishables. Alternatively, you can use the proceeds from the sale of your produce and/or byproducts (as per Goal #2 above) and donate it to a cause that battles food insecurity.
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Learn more about what the Plant a Seed & See What Grows Foundation is doing to promote gardening education for kids throughout Canada.
