Ask our expert: I’d like to encourage my kids to grow vegetables but they don’t seem interested? Sadie Bolet, Warminster

Beverley Glock writes: Home-grown vegetables not only taste fantastic, they are cheap to grow, and incredibly fresh - they can be on the plate in minutes. If your children like getting dirty and making mud pies - highly likely, especially if they're boys - then planting fruit and veg is a great way to get muddy without getting told off. It's also a useful way to encourage children to taste vegetables that they might otherwise turn up their noses at.

Here are ten tips to get you started:

1. Seeds can take ages to germinate and children (and adults) get fed up waiting, so start with cress or rocket – which grows really quickly, hence the name.

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2. Buy baby vegetable plants for instant gratification and allow the children to get as dirty as they want planting them. Children come washable and there’s always the hosepipe to clean them up and water the plants at the same time.

3. Give the children their own pots, window boxes or dedicated space in a vegetable plot and encourage them to weed as they "play" in the mud.

4. Get the children to paint the pots with their name, a picture of what they are growing or just bright, colourful designs.

5. Older children can research seasonal fruit and veg and put together a planting and picking chart; younger children can help to draw and colour the fruit and veg on the chart and make it a family effort.

6. Watering the plants can be great fun, just don’t get cross when they end up drenched, if they enjoy it they’ll do it every evening and it will encourage them to check on how their plants are doing – just dry their clothes off overnight.

7. Give the children their own gardening equipment; trowel, spade and fork, they can paint these, too, to make them individual. Gloves are useful for children who don’t like getting their hands dirty.

8. Grow sunflowers or pumpkins and see who’s grows the biggest – make sure you attach a name label to them, or get the children to give their sunflowers or pumpkins a name and have a chart to record how much they’ve grown every week.

9. When the vegetables are ready to pick, let the children pick their own, wash them and prepare them and then do taste tests with shop-bought vegetables to see if they can taste the difference – this may help them try different vegetables, too.

10. Keep a butterfly chart to spot the different butterflies which the plants attract or keep a bumble bee or slug chart to count how many bees or slugs they spot each day. Expect a high slug count when it’s been raining.

Got a question about children and food? Use the comment box below to post your question for our children's food expert Beverley Glock

For more information visit: www.splatcooking.netand www.beverleyglock.com

For the best local produce in your area visit the Times Real Food Directory

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