By Barbara Damrosch
Special to The Washington Post
Thursday, May 8, 2008

It's a rite of passage. The teacher gives each child a seed, some potting soil and a paper cup. Miraculously, the seeds grow. "All except mine," my husband says, laughing. Though he's a successful farmer today, his cup was the only empty one.

Planting your first seed is an inspiring introduction to nature's power, especially if the seed bears something you can eat, but for that you need more than a little cupful of earth. Now that the soil has warmed enough to sow beans, I recommend finding a packet of them, and a child, then getting the two together. Bean seeds are big and easy to poke into the ground. Look for the eye (the little sunken patch where the root will emerge), and place the bean with the eye facing downward for quicker germination and better growth. Many beans are speckled, blotched or dazzlingly colored. Scarlet runner beans (magenta streaks on a black background) have gorgeous red flowers pollinated by hummingbirds. Pole beans in general are fun because they soon tower over a child that plants them.

Giant sunflowers are slower but no less of a thrill. It's empowering, when you're small, to produce a 10-foot stalk, topped with a bright yellow flower a foot wide.

Corn is another plant with easy-to-handle seeds and a spectacular end result. Most kids love to pick, husk and eat corn on the cob, not to mention popcorn and the multicolored Indian corns, which can be used for decoration or ground into cornmeal. Be sure to buy untreated seeds, since young children like to put things in their mouths. The pink fungicide that often coats corn and pea seeds is toxic to eat and makes seeds look like candy.

Seed potatoes, either planted whole or cut up so that each piece has an eye, are wonderfully kid-friendly, not only because of their ease of planting but because it's so exciting to dig up the result. Watch for the white or violet flowers to appear, the sign that new potatoes are lurking under the ground like buried treasure, ready for kids to hunt for them. Providing a soil that is rich in organic matter, hence loose and friable, will give a better yield and make the soil easier for small hands to probe.

For a child consumed by virtual life on a glowing screen, the tactile physicality of growing food from seed is a healthy antidote. Fortunately, children have a natural grasp of the literal and the real. One dad learned this lesson well after telling his daughter she had come from a seed that he and her mom had planted. "Oh!" she exclaimed. "Was my picture on the packet?"