Garden proves to be best of classrooms

For the remainder of my days, I hope to retain an image from this past summer: three golden-yellow cherry tomatoes on a small, white paper plate framed by two ribbons, a blue “First Place” award and a larger purple ribbon proclaiming “Best of Project.” Propped in back, a plaque reads, “4H Vegetable Garden Award.” And I will never forget the smile on little Lynne’s face as we stand before this scene at the Blue Hill Fair, the culmination of a summer’s work in her garden.

The summer of 2005 was filled with lessons learned from corn and tomatoes. Lynne, nearly ten now, loves to eat sweet corn and cherry tomatoes and quickly agreed to grow both as 4H projects. Plans were made through winter as the seed catalogs came in the mail, and she was in the garden with her mother and I as soon as the soil was warm enough for planting. She planted a single “Sungold” cherry tomato plant at the back of a raised bed and surrounded it with petunia and snapdragon transplants, an original design. She had selected the plants at the local garden center, hardening them off on the back porch for several days before planting.

For her corn crop, Lynne took over an entire garden bed. Learning from the seed packet that the soil should be at least 65 degrees F before sowing, she supervised the covering of the bed with black plastic in early spring and monitored the slow but steady increase in soil temperature with a soil thermometer. Mosquitoes were swarming on the appointed sowing day, but she stuck it out, placing each seed at the proper depth and spacing in each of the eight short rows.

The tomato bed was a huge success from the start. Lynne did all of the watering, fertilizing, weeding, and staking. She deadheaded the petunias and snapdragons. She kept a record of all her costs and an activity log, carefully entering every task.

In August she harvested her first tomatoes, picking them at the peak of golden ripeness. The harvest lasted for weeks and seldom did a tomato make it to the kitchen. Lynne eats them by the handful, like candy.

The corn crop, on the other hand, had other lessons to teach. After sowing, the weather turned cold and rainy for days; germination was slow and uneven. Eventually, however, seedlings emerged, only to be toppled by cutworms. Instead of thinning to a final spacing, Lynne had to transplant survivors to fill in the rows.

When the weather settled, the surviving corn seedlings began to grow, along with Lynne’s hopes of actually making a crop. We talked of shucking the fresh ears and running, not walking, back to the kitchen to plop them in boiling water for exactly three minutes.

But the midnight barking of the family dogs foretold crop failure. Responding to the project report question, “What did you learn from this project?” Lynne wrote, “I learned that raccoons steal corn.” All of it, except for three ears.

The garden is the best of classrooms, a place where children can experience both the joy of success that accompanies diligent husbandry and the despair of failure despite all effort. The garden teaches both, but it is the former that stays with us, makes lifelong gardeners of us. Remember this as the seed catalogs pour in this winter, as you make your garden plans for next spring. Involve the kids from the start.

Send queries to Gardening Questions, P.O. Box 418, Ellsworth 04605, or to reesermanley@shead.org. Include name, address and telephone number.