As most of you know, I am passionate about growing our own fruit and vegetables. It's something which takes over a huge amount of my time in the summer, but it's also one of the things that my children don't take much interest in, no matter how hard I try. Although they are perfectly willing to pick and eat the strawberries and raspberries when they are ready! We were challenged to try the Big Grow with innocent Smoothies. The aim of the challenge is for children to grow their own vegetables, enabling them to understand where their food comes from.
Included in the pack is a pack of seeds and a small compost disc, which my children declared was magic, and I have to agree with them! You can sign up here to receive your own Big Grow pack. By growing vegetable seeds themselves, it will make children much more likely to eat fruit and vegetables. Hopefully this will ensure that they continue with healthy eating habits for the rest of their lives.
My son was initially unwilling to try the smoothie with beetroot, because he can read and thinks he doesn't like beetroot. I had to tell a little lie, and said it was just a joke and there wasn't any in there at all. He drank it all and asked for more, so my lie was worthwhile. I came clean afterwards and he said he'd try beetroot in the future! Once your child has drunk their smoothie, you simply cut off the top of the pack and then pour the required amount of water onto the compost disc, which grows magically in front of your eyes! We were all seriously impressed with these discs and the speed that they grew.
Then it's time to get mucky, squash up the compost until there are no hard bits, and fill your smoothie packet with the soil. I actually don't recall the last time both children sat down and did something together without one of them getting bored or the pair of them fighting, but this activity kept them both entertained.
Then it was time to plant the peas, ensuring that they poked them down into the soil. We also added a tiny but of water when the peas were all in, before popping them on the window sill in the kitchen to wait for them to grown. It's so important to teach our children not only where their food comes from, but also how simple it is to grow our own vegetables.
Within only a couple of days, shoots started to appear. My children are both insanely competitive, and obviously this turned into a competition of whose were growing fastest. Thankfully, both of their sets of peas grew incredibly quickly, and every morning we could see new growth. It was fun to come down every morning for breakfast and see just how much they had grown each day.
Disclosure: I have worked in partnership with innocent Smoothies for this blog post. All opinion is my own.
