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
These articles were
originally published in The
Record and the Guelph
Mercury.
My latest column can
be viewed there,
Information is relevant to
Zone 5, Southern Ontario, Canada.
Reprinting by permission only.
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David Hobson