Charles and Theo Plant a Garden

It feels like I’ve been waiting forever, but our kids are finally old enough to actually help me with the vegetable garden! Now that Theo is 2 1/2, he follows directions and doesn’t smash seedlings; Charles, at 4 1/2, helps plant seeds and harvest. Two years ago, I set aside a small corner of my garden for Charles’s play – a spot he could happily dig in without fear that he’d destroy seedlings. Last year, with both boys mobile, we put in a pea tent/fort and tried to landscape around it with kid-friendly plants. This year, things have expanded quite a bit, driven by the boys’ own creativity as well as my desire to have more than a giant dirt pile.

Starting our Seedlings

I generally haven’t started anything indoors; as an impatient person, I find sprouting and tending seedlings tedious, and with young dogs and children in the house, couldn’t stomach both the wait and the impending [imagined] disaster: dirt and baby plants all over the living room floor. This year, I decided it was time to watch things sprout, and the garden tends to put up too many weed seedlings for it to be a truly fun thing to watch for the kids. So we set up a small seed-starter and planted

• Pony Watermelon
• Charentais Melon
• Summer Savory
• Bush Cucumbers
• English Cucumbers
• Sunflowers
• French Marigolds

Each of these plants has distinctive seed shape and size, and we ran the gamut from 2-inch-deep single-seed planting to surface scattering, so the kids stayed involved and interested in our tiny planting project. I sourced my seeds from John Scheeper’s Kitchen Garden Seeds; I find that their seeds germinate well and the varietals they carry work well in our climate. I’ve had less luck – although I try every year – with our local organic garden seeds.

Preparing our Garden

While we waited for the weather to warm up enough to plant outside, we turned compost, hoed and shaped our rows – including the kids’ bed – and put landscaping fabric in between the rows to help keep weeds down and show the children where it was safe to walk. The boys were eager to help with this project; they love being outside, and they both like to be helpers. I was happy to find them little jobs to do, and happy for their company!

 

The Boys’ Corner

Once it was warm enough to plant, it was time to think about what was going where! I walled off the asparagus bed, which is tucked behind their corner, with some old tomato cages spread out; these formed a natural trellis for peas to climb up, and had the added benefit of keeping the kids from stepping on just-emerging asparagus heads. We planted peas around one side of the pea tent, as well. [The “tent” is made from bent fenceposts covered in trellising netting.] They chose snow peas – a wonderful choice, as the plants are large, hard to destroy, and easy to harvest from inside the tent.

 

Both boys are partial to watermelon, and because I couldn’t find a better place – or even space! – in the rest of the garden, we planted our pony watermelon seedlings around the other side of the tent. They had a rough start, but we tucked fresh compost in around them every week for the month of June, and once the heat of July kicked in, they started climbing the trellis. Hopefully no little critters or coyotes will eat them this year!

The sunflower seedlings needed to go somewhere desperately, so one afternoon while Theo slept, Charles and I delineated “beds” with old wooden tomato supports and planted the sunflowers in one tidy row. Charles placed a little blue garden fairy at the head of the row, to watch over them as they grew. Sunflowers are an amazing flower to grow with kids – they sprout quickly, grow quickly, and can be any number of imaginary things; we’ve read books where sunflowers are pretend monsters; serve as gifts for dragons; make their own grown-up free fort as they grow in a circle; and the boys come up with their own stories. Planting all of ours in a row has had the intended effect of walling off the boys’ section of the garden so it feels like a special enclave to them. They’re especially thrilled now that the flowers are up over Mommy’s head!

Also in their corner are plants they chose, planted, and tend themselves: two ever-bearing strawberry plants, covered in a good deal of bird netting to keep out birds and chipmunks, and tucked in with straw; and two large purple pansies, selected by Charles for color and me for hardiness [kids can step on pansies, and pull them up, and unlike their name suggests, they persist]. I also planted baby beets in one corner as a surprise, and we’ve let flowers from last year’s wildflower patch reseed themselves – a large maroon cosmos keeps them excited.

It’s exciting to watch them sit in their pea tent and munch peas from the plants around them. They emerge and bring in a cucumber or green beans to share, pretending one is cooking dinner for the other. They’ve dug a huge hole in one corner countless times – there is still a big enough patch of unplanted ground for them to have a satisfying game going with construction trucks and matchbox cars. I’m glad they’re entertained while I’m weeding and harvesting; their little voices keep me company; and they now have a sense of ownership and stewardship. Win. Win win win. I’m so happy to have my boys in the garden!