Vegetable Garden Memories

My early memories about gardening are mostly about learning to grow veggies. 

In grade school, our class (like just about every other grade school class in America) did a spring project of watching beans and corn sprout in jars lined with paper towels. (Who knows what happened with those sprouts after about the third or fourth week?) In grade school, we were only interested in watching the seeds swell, sprout a tail (root), sprout their first leaves, then start growing. Then it got boring. Well, boring to third graders.

We didn't learn that the first leaves were called cotyledons. We didn't learn that the pairs of cotyledons of the bean gave it a categorization of "dicot" or that the single cotyledon of the corn gave it a categorization of "monocot." We were just intrigued by watching the growth process through the side of the jars in which they were sprouting.

Later, at home, I asked Mom (our resident gardener) if we could plant some corn. So, we planted a row of corn. Yep, one long row of corn. (OK, about 10 feet of corn.) The experienced gardeners out there are already chuckling mightily. They're chuckling because they know that what we got from the long summer of carefully tending those stalks was something that looked a lot more like popcorn. They know that corn has to be planted in blocks -- multiple rows planted side-by-side -- for effective pollination to occur. Hey! It was a learning experience. 

As the years went by I learned to plant corn, carrots, strawberries, zucchini (good lord!), bush beans, herbs, and more. Each year I learned a little more. I learned what worked and what didn't. I learned how to effectively amend soil for veggies. I learned about compost. I learned about composting in piles, bins, and sheets. I learned about the traditional "kitchen garden" (the garden planted for food for the household as opposed to the rest of the landscaping or crops for sale) and the "Victory Garden." I learned about "square-foot gardening" (where you have ultra-rich soil and plant a succession of crops shoulder-to-shoulder and cheek-by-jowl for quick growth and harvest) and organic gardening. I learned about vertical gardening (where you grow vining crops up a trellis rather than letting them sprawl across the ground). I learned about "companion planting" (where you plant things together that actually enhance each other's growth and plant things apart that would otherwise hinder each other's growth). I learned about planting in raised beds. 

Yes, I've learned a lot of things about growing vegetables (and fruits), but I continue to learn more every year. I wonder what I'll learn this year?