The Garden Classroom: Learning Beyond Zoom
Painting by Sadie Piazza
As I write this, we’re coming up on a year of lockdown. What began as a few weeks while we sorted this virus out has turned into months, and now a year. When the pandemic hit, I was just starting the seeds for my summer garden and I found the activity to be a good way to deal with some of the uncertainty ahead. And since the grocery stores’ shelves were bare, in my mind I was making sure we had food for the summer ahead. Before I knew it, I’d started 80 tomato plants and hundreds of others. I did much of this after my young kids went to bed, but reserved a couple trays to keep under the lights for them to experiment with.
My children learned the process of starting seeds when they were very young. I kept the trays on my dining room table for germination and we whispered in that room because the “baby seeds were sleeping.” When the plants peeked above the soil, they were “awake” and we moved them to a new home under the grow lights.
As in any science experiment, I had the kids make some guesses as to what seeds belonged to which plant, talk about the differences in the size, shape, color and smell of the seed. As my kids grew older and had better dexterity, I would allow them to plant smaller seeds both in the garden and in seed starting trays. Toddlers can plant sunflowers, peas, corn and beans without too much trouble, but don’t expect their rows to be tidy or straight. Once my kids became preschoolers, we direct-sowed pelleted seeds for carrots and lettuce. A pelleted seed is a seed with a coating on it to make it larger and easier to handle and it also aids in germination. They could plant radishes and brassica seeds (broccoli, kale, bok choi and cabbage to name a few) directly in the ground. Now that my oldest is going on 6, we are going to practice planting small seeds using the tip of a chopstick dipped in water to pick up the really tiny ones—flowers like poppy, strawflower and aster are good if you want a real challenge.
Starting seeds under lights is great for older kids too— they can plan out a garden, calculate how many plants to start and help pick varieties from seed catalogs. They get very excited about it and it teaches patience when they pick out a seed variety in January and wait all summer to harvest it in August or September. Regardless of your children’s age (or your own!), the excitement of pulling a homegrown carrot out of the garden is magical. I stop and have the kids make predictions—will it be long? Short? Twisty? Pink, purple, yellow?
If you are itching to do some gardening with your kids but don’t want to turn the house into a grow room, a bright windowsill works well enough for them to learn the basic stages of a plant. But for growing nice healthy seedlings to plant out in the garden, it is not something I would recommend. The plants won’t get enough light and they’ll become leggy; when you transplant them they’ll just sort of topple over. But even leggy plants are fun to grow and study, and kids can definitely learn from the process!
Another fun thing to do with kids of any age is to soak a pea or bean seed in a moist paper towel for a couple of days and then place that into a clear container (like a Mason jar) with a little water and watch it grow. They can see the root development and leaves pop up. Even as a grownup it is pretty neat to watch.
Virtual learning has come a long way since last March, and educators have done a tremendous job adapting and keeping kids engaged. Creating mini plant-related experiments at home helps pass the time and breaks up some of the day to day monotony. Noticing a new set of leaves that were not there last week or counting down the days until the last frost has helped my family pass the time.
In the Boston area, the last frost is late May, so this time last year we were still thinking we might be rid of this whole pandemic by summer. The kids helped me plant out the vegetable and flower seedlings we had started under lights and I gave them a dollar store squirt bottle to “help” with the watering. I let them pull weeds and dig the holes before we planted. I handed out tomato seedlings to anyone I knew who came within a few feet of my property; thanks to my COVID-anxiety seed starting practice, I had plenty to share. And by this point Zoom fatigue was setting in and having a garden to go out to between calls really helped break up the day.
I will be honest: Sometimes I went out to the garden to be with my kids and sometimes I went to the garden to get away from them. That is the beauty of having a garden space.
It can be a place to share with your family or a quick escape to get some sun on your face and take out some anger on rogue dandelions. I enjoyed taking the kids out to pick lettuce for my lunch; maybe your child will eat the lettuce you grow, but for now mine refuse—doesn’t matter if it’s purple, named after a candy or if they helped plant it, lettuce is one of the foods they refuse. Fine—more for me. They will eat plenty of other veggies from the garden; they ate all my cucamelons (small cucumber-like fruits about the size of a grape), ground cherries (a much tastier cousin of the tomatillo plant) and every snap pea I that grew. One day they will be after my lettuce but for now I am happy they know how it grows and enjoy harvesting it.
Aside from the food growing in the garden we loved watching the birds and bugs that visited the space. These observations are a way to teach kids about the diversity of the pollinator population and why we need each type of insect—they all pollinate different plants. You don’t realize the sheer number of flying insect varieties that live in your area until you grow a garden. I try to add plants that attract beneficial wasps such as yarrow, parsley and fennel—and some of those wasps are kind of wild looking!
Last year, we also added a hummingbird feeder. I was convinced we did not have hummingbirds in our area but figured, why not try? It was like Christmas morning-level excitement for me (and maybe the kids, too) when a pair of ruby-throated hummingbirds visited the feeder for the first time. Fun fact: Only one pair of hummingbirds will visit a feeder as they are territorial and once they pick a feeder, it is theirs. I recall seeing people with tons of bird feeders and wondered why, but now I get it—we will be adding a couple more feeders this spring.
For those who are in an urban area or don’t have the time or space to grow a garden, a couple of planters or grow bags is a wonderful way to get growing regardless of space or time. Grow bags have come into the gardening scene in a big way these past couple of years but really skyrocketed in popularity during quarantine. They’re made of breathable cloth or fleece and hold soil just like a pot but at a fraction of the cost of even the least expensive planter; and because they are breathable, the roots don’t get tangled up or bound. They come in 5, 10, 15 gallon-sizes and larger; the 10-gallons were perfect for potatoes and tomatoes and they cost around $5 each. Just make sure to fill them with good quality soil.
If you are looking for a quick, easy way to grow a garden and thinking you may want to add more as the season goes on, grow bags are a great way to do that in any setting, but especially small spaces. We grew potatoes and saffron crocuses in them. Picking potatoes in a grow bag is like digging for treasure, and it’s super easy for smaller kids to do—my two year-old loved it, and I think even younger kids would be able to dig around and find some spuds. I highly recommend buying seed potatoes from the Maine Potato Lady; she has a wide variety and her spuds have always done well for me in containers.
My children definitely earn their nightly bath during gardening season—playing in the soil, mud and sand every day. It may produce more laundry but it’s great for a person’s mental health. Soil contains Mycobacterium vaccae which releases serotonin in the brain when it comes in contact with the skin: Soil literally makes you happier. Couldn’t we all use a bit more happiness right now?
Don’t get me wrong: My children definitely got more screen time this year than pre-pandemic, but the garden was a fantastic way to break up the day and get them off their devices. When I would yell “farm chores!” they would throw on their Bogs and head outside for whatever job had to be done, even if it was something little to keep them busy so I could tend the garden. Going out and exploring the world around us is something we look forward to when this pandemic is far behind us, but I am so grateful for the extra time we’ve had at home because we got to grow together, watching the seasons go by.
If you are growing a garden this year, or have questions, reach out anytime–I would love to see what you and your little ones are growing.
This story appeared in the Spring 2021 issue.
