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Letting Go, Revisited

© Linda Mazar

If you read my July article Letting Go, you know that I allowed my 10 year-old son a lot of freedom in the planning and planting of his garden this spring. I stepped back and allowed him to plan and plant on his own. It was hard to do, but it was time for him to take more control of his garden.

What happened: It has been a very interesting growing season in Minnesota. We had a cold and very wet spring. Seeds rotted in the ground. This meant replanting some seeds or having bare spots. I left this decision to my son and he chose to replant some areas, but not others. In some ways it was fortunate that of the three packs of zucchini seeds he put in, only three plants made it. Whew! We were saved from using every zucchini recipe on the web! He lost his pumpkins though which was hard for him. Even Grandpa's pumpkin patch only produced 2 pumpkins this year, so part of that has to be the weather this year.

He also lost a lot of his sunflowers and so they were rather sparse this year. He did plant more of the zinnias we started from seed in areas where sunflowers didn't come up, so that helped some. His bean teepee had beans on it and the swing set almost did. He hadn't mentioned that he thought it would be "cool" to have scarlet runner beans climbing the swing set and that he had planted seeds there. But the soil by the poles had not been tilled and the soil was solid clay, so while the plants sprouted, they didn't make it.

What was learned: These "hands-on" experiments have taught my son a few things. I think the first thing he learned was that it is important to plant early in the season if he wants his plants to mature. Several plants did not get as tall or as full as he would have liked.

The next lesson learned was not to plant the flower seedlings so closely. They were very crowded and didn't grow as well. He also planted the seedlings right on the outer edge of the garden, which made it hard to keep the grass out of the flowers and keep a neat edge to the bed.

He also learned that the tall plants generally look better when planted behind the short plants. And that if you want your garden ornaments and bird baths, etc to show, they need to be in front of the tall plants. It was a design flaw, but when the plants hide the ornaments, no one can see them.

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