Connecting your children to the food they eat

I am not a good gardener.  To be perfectly honest, it terrifies me.  Not getting messy or dirty, but rather I have absolutely no idea what I'm doing in our yard.  We don't have the easiest yard to garden, we have large trees surrounding our backyard so it impedes good growing sunlight. We do, however, have a wonderful deck that gets great sunlight and have containered gardened since we bought the house 8 years ago.  I began with herbs-lavendar, rosemary, thyme, basil and parsley.  The first few years, every year I'd kill the herbs from either lack of water or too much direct sunlight.   A couple of years ago after a trip to Burgerville, we got seeds with our kid's meal.  Ethan and I planted them in our containers, we had snap peas and cherry tomatoes. He was 3 years that summer, I was amazed how he would go down to the deck, and eat them right off the vine.  Last year for Mother's Day, my gift was a trip to Portland Nursery.  We selected cherry tomatoes, an heirloom tomato variety, green and purple peppers, jalapenos, yellow squash, pumpkin, a few varieties of mint, basil, rosemary, and italian parsley.  The tomatoes do fine in containers, the yellow squash and pumpkins not so much.  I knew I needed a larger area to truly garden the way I want, to help further the connection of the food we eat and where it comes from  Ethan especially this year is at the age where the work that is put in will have dividends later.  We're also trying to teach him the valuable lessons of wasting food and money.  Claire is along for the ride this year.  She follows her brother into most anything he proposes.

 From the previous owner, we inherited a middle section in the grass which contained a few roses, a small maple tree, and ground cover.  We've had such mild weather this winter for Portland, last week while Ethan and Claire played outside, I thought, this is the year to rip out the middle section to convert to raised gardens.  I have talked about this for over 2 years.  We continued pulling out the ground cover over the weekend.  As you can see from the photo, we're still not finished but close!  I also ordered a seed catalog for Ethan and me to select seeds for which we're going to grow.  When I told him, he was so excited by the possibity of having an actual garden this summer.
Ethan has become an extremely picky eater of late.  One day, he loves green bell peppers and the next he decides he doesn't.  Like most parents, this is incredibly frustrating.  My hope is that by giving both children a vested interest in our garden, they will be more likely to try the vegetables we grow.