What are your childhood memories of gardening? I vaguely recall being involved in the planting of it, but I clearly remember pulling up a large cabbage from the vegetable garden. Mom had mentioned that she needed the cabbage for supper, and being such a helpful little kid, off I went down the garden with the biggest knife in the drawer. I wrenched the cabbage from the soil and began hacking off the stalk and outer leaves, which I flung, Frisbee-like, onto the compost heap.

It was such a satisfying experience, the kind that sticks in your memory. The birds singing, the fresh smell of the cabbage combined with that of the freshly disturbed soil, and the sun flashing off the blade of the knife as it created the scar that I still have on my thumb. I still can't eat cabbage without thinking of that experience, the memory reinforced, perhaps, by the extra helping I was rewarded with at supper that evening, oh yummy.

The point to this little story is not about being careful with sharp tools in a garden. No, the point is: I knew, and understood perfectly, where the food on the table came from — Mother Earth. In this day of store-bought, peeled mini carrots in plastic bags, how do children, or for that matter many adults, make the connection between an orange snack and a root vegetable grown in soil? It must be barely conceivable to someone who's never seen a real carrot growing. As for French fries, we don't even call them potatoes. You try explaining to a three year-old at McDonald's that French fries come out of the ground, and that they're not a second cousin to candy.

I think we'll be doing children a favour if we let them into the secret about home grown vegetables, and spring is the perfect time to begin. Planting seeds with children is fun, but watch their eyes pop out when they pull their first carrot from the soil or see the kernel of corn they dropped into a hole in become a plant that towers above them.

As a side benefit, children who grow vegetables they'd normally reject at the dinner table will wolf down their own produce. Let them eat directly from the garden and they'll be hooked on the freshness (wash the veggies first). The flavour of a peeled mini carrot does not taste anything like the real thing.

To get children interested in gardening, start early. Give pre-schoolers seed catalogues to read. They're filled with colourful pictures they can copy and colour. Browse them together and let them choose plants they'd like to grow. When it's time to begin planting, start them off with a small plot in a corner of the garden that they can tend. If there isn't a garden to work in, there's nothing wrong with growing vegetables in containers on the balcony or patio, or maybe there's a community garden in your neighbourhood where a young gardener can get started. For little ones, start plants that are large-seeded such as squash, pumpkins or watermelon. Besides growing vegetables, encourage them to grow flowers too. Let them plant pansies. They'll love the colourful faces. Grow flowers with fun names — Johnny Jump-Up, Lamb's Ear, or Bizzie Lizzie.

I believe that growing plants is an essential part of a child's education. In addition to  learning of the connection between the earth and the table — or a clamshell container — they'll learn to appreciate the health benefits of exercise and fresh air. They'll also develop their senses of taste and smell. If you consider the artistic side involved in designing and creating a garden, and the math needed to calculate areas and volumes, there's almost a complete early education available in an hour or two a day. Everything I learned about life, and this amazing planet earth, I learned in a vegetable garden — including knife handling skills