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My daughter is a gardening enthusiast, and I’ve found that it’s a fantastic activity for kids. It gets them outdoors, breathing in the fresh air, staying active, and even teaches them the value of patience—especially when it comes to growing veggies like asparagus! Some evenings or rainy days, we even bond over our family garden plan.
For me, this involves thinking about the ideal amount of sunlight a particular plant needs or which plants thrive when planted together. But for my daughter, well, her contributions to the family garden plan tend to depend on her mood for the day. I totally get that; there are plenty of days when I’d gladly trade some of the digging and weeding!
And sometimes, even with a well-thought-out family garden plan in place, things can take an unexpected turn when there’s a preschooler involved. That’s exactly what happened in the charming story by Barbara Vosburgh. In her tale, “Instant Salad Garden,” she recounts how two carefully planned gardens—one for the family and a smaller one for her daughter—transformed into one creatively “organized” patch filled with salad greens!
This article was originally published in our sister publication, GreenPrints Magazine, under the title, “Instant Salad Garden” It was written by Barbara Vosburgh and was published originally in 2017, in GreenPrints Issue No. 109. I hope you enjoy it!
Instant Salad Garden
One lovely spring day, I decided it was time to introduce my preschool daughter to the wonderful world of gardening. Our arms full—shovel, rake, spade, hose, seeds, string, and stakes—we headed to the rototilled area. I carefully roped off a four-foot-square area for her own garden.
“Debbie, rake out the rocks and weeds while I work over here,” I said. I handed her a child’s rake and she started the job.
While she was working in her area, I raked the large garden evenly and laid out straight rows for the seeds. When I finished, I looked behind me—and saw Debbie with her new toy golf club hitting her ball up, down, and through all my work. “I finished, Mommy!” she said with a big smile. “Now I’m golfing!”
I let out a deep sigh. “Honey, let’s get a bucket, and you can put all your rocks in it.” As Debbie started putting rocks in the bucket, I once again painstakingly laid out my straight rows.
“OK, Deb, time to plant our seeds! Let’s—” The seed packets were not where I’d left them. “Debbie, where did our seeds go?”
She pointed to her garden. She’d spread all our seeds over her little plot. “I planted them, Mommy!” she said with a proud smile.
I sighed again, deeply, then gently grabbed her hand. “Come on, Deb. We have to go to the garden shop for more seeds.”
That was almost 40 years ago. But you know what? It worked. Whenever we wanted salad that spring, we went out to Debbie’s garden, reached down, and pulled up a handful of whatever we touched. We had some interesting mixtures! ❖
Have you ever had a family garden plan that turned out much differently than you imagined?
