GroHappy

Celebrating the sun

To say that it has been unusual winter in the Northeast is an understatement and the first day of Spring was no different with temperatures in the mid 70s in Fairfield County and every chlorophyll-filled entity thinking it was May. In celebration of the season, we went for a nature walk at Ann’s Place and built sundials from trees and branches that were downed last year during our hurricane and Snotober.

The grounds were accommodating in beginning to show off their potential. A few of the 4,000 daffodils planted in the back started to unveil themselves though most were just awakening. The muscari was emerging along the path, its bunches of tiny grape-like purple blooms poking their spears though the soil appearing among the greening fescue grass.

As we walked the grounds everyone was amazed by how all the buds were swollen and ready to burst. “Here are a couple of things you want to avoid,” I pointed out. I then cut a sprout of Japanese barberry from a plant that had lodged itself in the rocks showing the class the tail tell orange innards as well as the spiky stems. “If you have this in your yard, you want to get rid of it. It may be pretty but it will take over,” I said and then pointed to the wetland area beyond the fence. It was filled with barberry, which was letting little else survive. Some skunk cabbages were making an attempt to show and flower, but they were hard to see under the blanket of greening barberry.

“Here is something else you want to avoid,” as I pointed to an attractive green floret. I attempted to pull it off but snapped off the stem. “This is not what you want to do when you try to get rid of garlic mustard. Pretty soon we will have to start weeding in earnest.”

As we walked around the garden, the sun started poking through the clouds. It was a good time to bring the group back to the front where I had set up an example of what we would be building that afternoon: a sundial.

“This is what all of you will be making today, a sundial. My wife, who is vastly more talented than me, made this one and it is accurate to our longitude and latitude.”

As some of my clients looked at me strangely (a familiar look) I explained. “It is guaranteed that nearly any sundial you purchase will be wrong as it need to be timed, so to speak, to the latitude and longitude where the sundial will reside. For people in the New York City area . . .” I then went on to describe the mathematics of sundials and how they work.  While the class was interested and attentive in how sundials worked it was clear they wanted to start building their own sundials.

Unlike other exercises we have had, building a sundial is much less free form as there are two important things you must consider. The first is transferring hour lines to the correct position on the dial face. The other is to position the gnomon, which casts the shadow on the dial, in the center of the dial so it lays directly above the line for high noon.

In keeping with the horticultural therapy theme, I cut the dials from a locust and black birch trees that fell on my property during the year. The gnomons were cut from Japanese red maple, sugar maple, black birch, and oak. I cut the disks as uniform as I could and then used my table saw to cut each gnomon so that it would lay on the dial at an angle of 41 degrees, which is the latitude of the NYC area. Given these materials, a series of instructions and templates, the group set off to work.

The usual casual chatter was deferred for quiet determination as each client focused on drawing their lines on the slab of their choice accurately. “Remember nothing is wrong until you commit a permanent marker to the wood and even then we can probably sand most anything off.”

Unlike other sessions, this one was filled with purpose and concentration. One of the clients became frustrated early as she was having a hard time working through the transfers of the sundial hour lines to her dial. “Nothing is wrong with what you are doing,” I assured her. “Just determine which direction you want your sundial to point toward and put down the template like this.” I demonstrated how to transfer the information and she became much calmer. A slight smile emerged.

“The fun part of this is how you personalize the sundial and what type of designs you want to consider. Those should be done free hand without transfer paper.”

As the session went on, everyone became more at ease with the task at hand and started to create different and unique designs (which I could not record as the battery on my camera died.) The chatter started slowly and then people were talking and sharing ideas as has been typical. When they were finished, each had a sundial that would tell time in their back yard. All were very happy with their accomplishment.

“I never would have thought about doing something like this,” said one. “But it turned out better than I ever could have imagined.”

When the clients finished their pieces, I sprayed them a few times with a quick drying lacquer to hold up against the elements. “You should consider putting a coat or two of spar varnish on these if you want them to last outside,” I suggested.

I then told them how to set their sundials at night, gave them a instruction sheet to help them remember and then sent them on their way. As I was cleaning up I noticed that the sun was still visible in the sky and my wife’s sundial had been left out still telling time.

A teddy becomes a grizzly

One of the nicest (and sometimes the most frustrating) things about gardening is the unexpected. In the garden, one of the more pleasant experiences that can manifest itself is an opportunistic crop or plant. For instance, this year an ornamental squash started in my bed where I planted Swiss chard in the spring. So far it has delivered 15 squash with at least another 6 on the way in the next few days. At Green Chimneys this year our opportunistic plant is not squash but sunflowers.

Three years ago we planted three different types of sunflowers: Moulin Rogue (all red), Gigantuous (big and yellow) and Ring of Fire (red in the center, yellow on the edges.) But since then we have not planted a single sunflower but we keep getting more and more sunflowers in the garden with each year. This year they were as thick as chickweed and we needed to pull out a lot more than we would have liked to.

But the interesting thing about these sunflowers is that only a few bear any resemblance to their elderly relatives. We have many different shades and configurations of red and yellow sunflowers in the garden because they have been cross-pollinated with a different cultivars for three years running. So a wild variety of flowers has bloomed with different heights, colors and flower configurations.

We have a couple of sunflowers in the garden that are over 12 feet high with a single defiant spike daring the squirrels to climb and eat (like the one to the right). Others have formed big clumps with small, but tall flowers.

But perhaps the strangest was the mutant Teddy Bear sunflower that appeared a few weeks ago. At the top of one of the large clumps, about 8 feet in the air was a Teddy Bear sunflower blossom about the size of a small seedless watermelon.  Teddy Bear sunflowers grow to a maximum height of two feet, with a smallish flower. This was not your typical teddy bear: it’s a grizzly.

“This must have cross pollinated with a Teddy Bear that was planted in the barrels down by the administration building [about a half mile away],” said Tracy. “It’s pretty cool looking.” Tracy and I agreed to try and save the seed of this big flower so that we could see what its offspring will look like next year.

 

Leaves of three, let them be

The morning was crisp and cold but with cloudless skies promising a much warmer day. The back gardens at Ann’s Place were as I left them last fall with a blanket of straw covering everything I planted last November but with one big difference: daffodils. The 3,400 daffodils I planted last year have come in full bloom and grace the little hillside on the southern portion of the property. They stand trumpeting the beginning of Spring and the emergence of all we did last year. A few weeks ago I planted 400 stragglers around the stairs and statue base that were installed after the initial planting; they too have started to poke their heads above the straw.

There was little time to appreciate this sight as I needed to remove all the straw from the beds we had created last year and start to prepare the ground to be seeded. The straw decayed little over the winter and each strand held on to each others forming chunky sheets. Underneath was the stirrings of new growth and old nemeses. Barberry babies were raising their heads, looking to take a first feeding of light. Like a ruthless mercenary, I pulled them out of their warm beds and discarded them with little thought.

Pale green grasses were starting to grow. Other weeds were starting to present themselves. I spotted what looked like poison ivy with its tale-tell three leaves. I removed it with little thought.

Many of the plants did well during the winter. The chokeberries, dogwoods, spiraeas and viburnums had been pruned a bit by the deer. The blueberries had not even been touched. The inkberries, unfortunately, had been heavily sampled and the mountain laurels that I (perhaps naively) planted have been eaten down to the bark showing little life. I may have to replace them. But overall everything is starting to bud out nicely and telegraph its rebirth to the surroundings.

As I kept removing the straw, I noticed more of the three-leaf plants. It was strange as I didn’t remember any poison ivy when we cleared the area last fall. And also the stem was red, not green as it should be. So I decided to grant mercy on the plant and wait to see how it developed. I’m glad I did because I started to discover hidden treasures.

The little three-leaf plants were scattered around but I soon started finding small rose bushes. Then a few ferns that I had not planted. Then a patch of wild strawberries. Then a jack in the pulpit: it was not poison ivy. Jack in the pulpit is easy to confuse with poison ivy as both have a similar three-leaf structure; the difference is when an erect spike forms (a spadix or Jack) that holds many tiny flowers and the sheath-like spathe (pulpit) appears that opens to form a hood. Though it is not endangered, I haven’t seen one for years in my walks in the woods even though they are rarely eaten by deer as they are poisonous.

You could never see any of these things under the barberry that covered the back portion of the property. I was pleasantly surprised to find that native plants were still around, just hidden from view by the barberry that we had removed. They had already gone dormant when I there in the fall.  I quickly became attuned to the potential for plants under the straw, which was now wrapping paper for the gifts of Spring.

After all the straw was removed, I was encouraged to see that besides what had been planted in the fall was complemented by flowers, bushes and ferns that had already been here. The soil was now bare and needed a bit of roughing up to better take the seed I will soon sow to restore other species that had long disappeared from the site. Milkweed, Joe-pye weed, New England Aster, big bluestem, goldenrod, Indian grass are but a few of the new plants that would perhaps reestablish themselves in this area. After broadcasting the seed I then spread a thin layer of shredded straw. This weekend it is supposed to rain and the cycle of growth will start again at Ann’s Place.

Jack and the beanstalk

When I work with children, I am often amazed at the creativity they can display. This happened recently with one of my charges, Jack, whom was perusing different seed catalogs looking for interesting things to plant in the months to come. We happened upon the beans and saw a couple of interesting types: yin-yang, purple podded pole and winged. Jack wondered if we could plant some of those next month. I told him sure but perhaps we could use the beans to create a story about him, Jack and the beanstalk.

"I hate that. Fairy tales are stupid."

"Why are you so upset Jack?

"Because fairy tails are for babies and I am not a baby!"

"That's not true Jack. You said that you liked mythology from the Greeks and Romans: many fairy tales are not that different from classic mythology."

"I don't care. I don't want to make up a story for babies about giants and castles."

"You don't have to make up a story for babies. You can make up any story you like as long as it includes a boy named Jack and a beanstalk. It is only limited by your imagination. How about we work on it together?” Jack shrugged but said he would try.

He started out the story as we started out the lesson. "As Jack was looking in a seed catalog for ideas of what to plant in the spring he discovered . . ."

When I came in I elaborated, "when we received the beans in the mail, we discovered that the seeds we received were not the seeds we picked. They looked magical as they were striped with seven different colors and glowed in the dark. Jack was disappointed that the wrong beans were sent to us but interested in the new beans and how they would grow."

Jack continued, "So Jack decided to plant them in the garden. Now it usually takes beans a few days to emerge from the soil but when Mr. Keller and Jack went by the garden the next day, there was an eight-foot high beanstalk with big fat bean pods on the plant. . . .

We continued for about 5 minutes. The plant never stopped bearing fruit, it had beautiful flowers that changed color, the beans smelled like your favorite dessert, etc. With just a simple prompting, Jack was making up a wonderful story. He didn't need my help to keep it going.

"That is great Jack, but we have to stop now and get you back to class."

"OK Mr. Keller. That was a lot of fun. Thanks."

"No problem Jack, I think we should plant some beans soon for the summer."

"That would be great. Especially if they glow in the dark."

January snow showers bring no flowers

January in New England does not bring to mind gardening, except to those die-hards impatiently waiting for the first hard melt. These frosty days January is a time where we fanaticize about gardens to come stimulated by the appearance of seed and gardening catalogues in the mail box. For us, it’s Christmas in January with gifts from Johnny’s, Baker Creek, Territorial and dozens of other companies that seed our hopes and interests in the warmer months to come.

I have given up hope for my hoop house garden as over 60 inches of snow, 20 degree weather and few sunny days in the last month make survival unlikely for even the hardiest of Swiss chards and winter greens. The beets and carrots should winter over, however. But the sweet March reward from their harvest seems far away and unlikely as another foot of snow blankets my yard.

The drifts in the back yard are over three feet making the walk to the compost heap hazardous as my leg sinks deeply down into the powder and ice as I make my way to it. There is no exothermal reaction from this pile, just a frozen mass of vegetation, like spent popsicles.

I continue to think about starting up a winter greens garden in my crawl space using shop lights and high temperature fluorescent bulbs, but every time I think about building something I am thwarted by the need to shovel snow. Today is no exception.

Digging out the garden

With over three feet of snow in less than a week, there is little time to think about gardening. My wife and I are from the school that likes to make many small trips outside to incrementally shovel rather than waiting for all the snow to fall so that it must be removed in one shot. But that is what happened last week as nearly two feet of snow was dumped in our area between 10 pm on Tuesday night and 7 am Wednesday morning. There was nothing incremental about it. Just large blades full of snow that were slowly and carefully removed.

When we go outside, there is a silence that is unique. There are no cars, no planes, nothing. Not even a barking dog.  The snow deadens all sound so the only thing you hear is your own breathing and the scrape of the shovel on the ground. At night it seems even more quiet and spiritual as the spotlights reflect on the falling snow. It is a magical time.

There is little time to reflect on that as my driveway and garden need to have vast quantities of snow removed. For me this is ironic as for once I had a good start this year on the fall (and winter) garden with us harvesting salads for two to three days a week through Thanksgiving. But then the cold hit and the raised beds froze up. And when we started to get a bit of a thaw, we started to get hit with snow every week.

It’s been a battle to keep the beds uncovered and this week I gave up trying to keep the back hoop clear, which has delicate little rosettes of miner’s lettuce growing nicely; at least they were last time I saw them in mid December. This winter’s experiment will be how well a hoop house can hold back snow.

The trouble with this much snow is that there is no place to throw it anymore. Three sides of my greenhouse have four feet of snow snuggled up next to them with over two feet on the roof. I’m hoping it will melt down over the week. It won’t.

One of the things I learned over the years is to leave the garden gate open before its snows because if you don’t and more than 6 inches fall, you can’t get it open. So I pry the gate open and put yet more snow on top of the strawberry beds as well as those that don’t have any vegetables growing. One of the beds is being used to winter-over some bushes I didn’t have time to plant this fall. We’ll see how well they do under five feet of snow.

It seems futile but I carefully remove layer by layer of snow from the cold frame and hoop house. They both have yet to collapse. The hoop house clips have held on to the Agribon and protected the now desiccated Swiss chard, romaine lettuce, beets, and assorted greens. My salads still may recover though it is hard to believe as both structures are bracketed by two feet of snow on all sides. With the sun and temperatures low and the frames pointing north, they will get little light or heat for weeks to come.

During the past week the neighborhood birds have ravaged the feeders as the snow has long since covered any food on the ground. The birds are perched in a nearby Japanese Maple like so many Christmas ornaments. Bobwhites, cardinals, pine siskins, chickadees, doves, finches, sparrows, bluebirds and the appropriately named snowbirds are just some of the ever changing decorations. They appear much larger than they are as they fluff their clothing to stay warm. The woodpeckers and blue jays don’t perch with the others; they have their own places to go.

They queue on the tree, which is near a feeder, as they wait their turn to grab a few sunflower seeds before flying back. It is a chaotic and un-orderly process as the larger aggressor birds take their time feeding, scaring other competitors away. So the smaller birds wait and bide their time hoping for a chance to grab a few seeds so they can survive another cold day.

The existential pleasures of the unfamiliar

One of the things most gratifying in working with children is introducing them to familiar friends that they have never seen or experienced. That has been the case this year at Green Chimneys where we got rid of our loud, noisy and dangerous gas mower replacing it with a Scotts 16-inch reel model. Tracy was a bit dubious in the beginning when I suggested the switch as I predicted that the children would gladly take over our mowing chore in a Tom Sawyer-like way. After we finally got the mower in the mid summer, I found out how correct I was.

"My God. That is all they want to do," said Tracy after the mower was assembled and put to use. "The lawn gets mowed two or three times a day now." It doesn't really matter that the kids don't mow in a straight line or follow a regimented pattern. When you mow an area a few times a day, everything will get cut eventually.

I was able to extend this lesson to one of my kids, Paul, recently. Paul is an unusual child in that he hunts with his father and knows how to drive his uncle's John Deere tractor; he also mows lawn, shovels snow and rakes leaves for extra money. Reminds me of the sorts of things I did as a kid (save hunting.)

"Have you ever used a mower like this before," I asked. "No," he replied. "This looks pretty old-fashioned."

"Well yeah, but do you think you are strong and clever enough to handle it?"

He gave me a knowing smile and then grabbed the handle of the mower.

Paul gave it an initial push and seemed a little shocked at the ease by which it moved along the ground sending up a tiny wave of grass clippings that landed by his feet. He walked to the end of a row and then turned around to come back. He had a big smile on his face. "This is a lot of work, but it's a lot of fun too."

"If you want to do a really good job, you need to watch your line and overlap where the blades cut so you don't miss any parts." I then showed him how to navigate a turn so that you don't have a line of unshorn grass. He nodded and took over and started to concentrate. As he walked up and down the grassy area in the garden his eye was trained on the wheel and the line of grass he was trying to align it toward. He had a look of determination as he carefully attempted to guide the mower so that he did not waste any amount of his cut.

Paul soon fell into a groove and was wearing a big dopey smile on his face. I just sat on an old bucket watching him mow the lawn with the only sound in the background being a few twittering birds and the rhythmic swish of the reels cutting the remaining grass.

Stairway to raspberries

I continue to be surprised at how adaptable and clever are the children I work with. Last week it was time to build a set of stairs in the hill that contains the raspberry bushes we planted this year. Last year my Green Chimneys students and I built the trellises between which we would string wires that would support the raspberry brambles. My students all had a great time being taken out of the usual garden chores and introduced to the new challenge of building something using different power tools.

Tracy and I had decided to construct stairs to make it easier to walk between the rows as well as minimize a ditch that was forming from the runoff created by the raised beds we had built last year. The good news about the upper garden is that it doesn’t flood as it used to; the bad news is that the water needs to go somewhere.

So with that in mind and some left over pressure-treated four by fours, we started to build the stairs. My first chore was to teach my students how to measure and use a level. One of the things I am constantly amazed at is the lack of what I would have considered elemental skills. But perhaps this is due to my childhood and how I brought up my girls. Like my father with me, whenever I had a job to do I had my girls, Kathryn and/or Sarah, help me with the simple things like measuring and seeing if the different timbers were level. By the age of six or seven they had mastered these skills and would make their own little constructions with scraps of wood that were left over from the job. One year when our television was being repaired, Sarah made a series of TV sets with squares of wood and nails for antennas and then created a TV show on the different sets.

The lack of skills of these children was not due to any inherent problem but rather the lack of training and exposure. My job was to fill in these holes. I held up the level for each child showing how the little bubble within a tube of liquid needed to rest between two thin lines in order for the level to be level. Most were able to pick up this skill fairly quickly. I still found that I needed to be more explicit with my instructions.

“Ellen, is it level?,” I said after setting in a timber.

“Yes it is,” replied Ellen holding the level up in the air with the bubble balanced perfectly between the two lines.

The job was simple and the kids got a big kick out of putting it together. We first used a pickaxe to channel out a hole that would support a footing beam. After making sure it was level, we created adjacent and perpendicular channels until we had a base that we could build upon. We then measured how long each timber needed to be and cut it with a chop saw. We then used a portable drill to pre-drill the holes for the spikes that would hold the timbers together. After nailing the timbers together, we hammered rebar on the sides and front to support and stabilize them. At the end we dumped in wheelbarrows of rocks as a base. Each child had a favorite job.

Ellen liked to use the pickaxe. She carefully used it to channel out wide grooves that the timbers would fit into. It took her a while to figure out how to make the grooves level, but she enjoyed the challenge and after a bit became quite exacting. Ben (and most the other boys) took to the drill. They all followed the same learning curve. I told them to press slowly and hold the drill with both hands so it would not torque out of their grip and possibly hurt them. They all ignored this and held it with one hand right before the tool spun out of control.

“Wow that is really strong,” said Ben. “Yes it is Ben. How do you think it is able to drill through wood so easily? Hold it with both hands and press the button gently.” After a few tries they all got it and we became a well-oiled team.

Measuring lengths of wood exposed the cognitive differences between the different children. I used measuring and a tape measure as a way to teach simple arithmetic.  Some children were able to use it for multiplication. Others were not able to read and understand simple numbers. Strangely, no one became frustrated as I helped them with simple counting get to the right place on the measuring tape.

The one area that their skills also varied in was hammering the spikes into the wood. Pre-drilling the timbers helped a bit, but we still needed to go through two inches of undrilled wood, which was a task even for me. Most of the children quit after they started to hit undrilled wood, though one child, Edward, was determined to hammer all of his spikes in. With each swing he became more determined even though the power he was able to auger was in decline. After smashing in two spikes he turned the hammer over to me with sweaty pleasure. “It’s your turn now Mr. Keller.”

So that is how it went the entire day as we worked our way from the bottom up. For all my charges, the day flew by and no one wanted to go back to class. They wanted to stay and finish the job. To me that is the best lesson that I can give them and showed me that sometimes the best job in the garden sometimes doesn’t include plants.

Looking to no-mow a no-grow lawn, part 4

Last fall I stopped writing about my fledgling lawn as the grip of winter ceased its growth. It’s been a long haul over the past 8 months since the first bits grass were planted. To recap, over two-thirds of the property that I garden was torn up last August when a new septic system was installed. The lawn was torn up, which over the years went from a Wimbledon-like monoculture supported by a lawn service and chemicals by the prior owner to a collection of greenery that was mowed and neglected by me. To me the purpose of a lawn is to stop erosion and support the occasional Wiffle Ball game that our family plays during the holidays. So unlike many of my fellow Americans (and neighbors) I do as little as possible to spruce up and maintain the lawn. I don’t fertilize it. I don’t water it. I let the clippings fly and decompose where they might. I mow the law with a Scott’s manual mower and behead recalcitrant blades with a hand sickle. And my wife and I have aggressively been shrinking the size of our lawn with flower beds, shrubbery, ferns and anything else that will take up space.

So rather than do the slavish thing and replant in rye or bluegrass (which require lots of water and chemical support to be healthy,) I figured that I would seed with grass (and other things) that would require little if any care. Throwing caution and seeds to the wind, I replanted with clover and five different varieties of fine fescue that grow slowly and need little human intervention. I then waited and worried.

Unlike rye, fescue grows deliberately and slowly with most of the grass showing growth of a little over 1 inch in a patchy fashion by the time it went dormant in November. Given the sloping topography of my land I was worried that it would not hold the soil and large rivulets would be gouged from the soil. But surprisingly, after three storms that each dumped between 6 and 10 inches of rain, there was little erosion. The tiny blades were holding the soil, which meets my first criterion for a lawn.

But there were a lot of bald spots so I decided in late March to mix 1 pound of clover seed with 40 pounds of play sand and broadcast it over the lawn to complement the fledgling grass. And with the rain and warmth of spring it started to grow as well as the grass I planted.

In some areas the lawn had become thick and lush. Erma Bombeck wrote a book called, “The Grass is Always Greener over the Septic Tank,” which shows she knew nothing about grass or a septic tank. The reality is that the grass is always greener over the septic field, which is where my grass and clover was growing well.

By early May the lawn had become a quilt of a few stubborn dirt spots, tuffs of clover, thick and thin patches of fescue and crabgrass. Now I didn’t plant crabgrass. The birds and the wind did. For a while I didn’t care and had an attitude of noblesse oblige. A no-mow lawn is about not working (or caring) that much about a lawn. Let 1,000 weeds flourish. Who cares? Already some bugleweed had taken hold in areas as well as wild violets. Dandelions took their own place and the clover was spreading nicely. I also seeded some creeping thyme in my greenhouse and it should be ready for transplanting in another month or so around the lawn to take its place. I’m sure other things will emerge and I was looking forward to it.

After a few weeks, however, a certain cultivar of crabgrass became all too pervasive. Its presence started innocently with a few lean sentinels rearing their forms six to nine inches above the soil. No big deal. I grabbed my sickle and knocked them down in a few minutes. (Other crabgrass expressed itself by simply laying down. It could stay.)

But like the mythical beast Hydra of Lerna for every blade I cut, two or more sprouted up. And their growth seemed faster and more virulent than before. These lean sentinels became thick groupings. Taking my mower to these persistent intruders was a waste of time. This crabgrass adheres to the Taoist proverb, "To bend like the reed in the wind, that is the real strength."

Now if I just let them go, they would change my no-mow lawn to a swinging-sickle one. So with few natural alternatives I’ve been pulling crabgrass. Every day. And it seems to be working. For now.

Developing skills when planting peas and hanging string

In late March it was pea planting time at Green Chimneys as Spring had come early to the garden.  One of the day’s tasks was to plant two rows of peas, each row about 60 feet long. Eventually I would need to hang strings on poles so the peas could climb. One of the challenges when working with children in this area is getting them to plant either seedlings or seeds at a consistent space and depth. While some may believe that this type of rigor is unneeded, I believe that part of horticultural therapy is to persuade the child to tap into his or her intelligence and skill. I have found that when you have high expectations in the garden, they will often be met.

This turned out to be the case when I worked with Sheila to plant peas. When you plant a pea, you need to plant it between 1/2- and 1-inch deep and around 2 inches apart so they do not crowd each other. As I have discovered over the years, most children do not have a good concept of inches and a ruler or tape measure is not a good alternative to use. So what I do is to fabricate a template or tool to help the child.

Looking around the ground I found the perfect tool—A stick, which would serve three purposes.

1) Make a hole.

2) Measure the depth of the hole.

3) Measure the space needed to plant the seeds.

I first cut the stick so that a branch nub was 1/2 inch from the end. By pushing the stick into the ground, Sheila could make a hole for a pea as well as understand how deep to push the stick. I also cut a notch into the stick that was two inches from its other end. I told Sheila that she needed to space the peas far enough apart so that one pea would touch the end of the stick and the other touch the notch.  She nodded and we started to plant.

With jobs like these, I let the child define the work and run the project. I become the helper and she the leader. What has been unusual when the traditional roles are reversed is that the child often wants to redefine the job to become more productive. For instance, when Sheila and I planted peas, I held the peas, she poked a hole in the soil, dropped a pea and then let me cover the pea up with soil.

She soon tired of this and decided instead to poke 10 holes at the same time, fill each with a pea and then move on. She also wanted to hold the peas, leaving me with nothing to do save put soil on top of each pea. With each 10 feet of row, she made subtle but time-saving changes in the job. By the end of our planting time together, I could barely keep up with her as she flew threw the effort and was ecstatic with her progress. We had planted 120 feet of peas in 40 minutes.

“I can’t believe we did all that work in such a short amount of time. That was fun,” said Sheila. 

The same was true a few weeks later. The peas had poked their shoots through the soil and would be ready to grab a string in the next few weeks.  It was time to build a trellis for the peas to latch onto. This exercise was a bit more time consuming as we had to lay out a line, wrap it and attach it to each pole and move on to the next one. Progress was compounded by the fact that the poles were 6 feet high and it was cumbersome to keep the string high and level.

Sheila didn’t make as much progress on this job as she was too short to do it by herself. Thus she depended on me much more than when she was planting peas and was not as inventive in discovering a better and faster way to lay out the lines. We only got lines done for half of one row. I needed to work with other children to finish the job.

One of the other children, Mike, threw himself into the job and discovered a better and faster way to lay out the lines. He formed loops and twisted the twine around the pole with a single deft motion. It was impressive to see him so motivated.

“This is the best thing we have ever done in the garden!” Mike exclaimed.

Ironically, Mike was shorter than Sheila but was able to come up with a more effective method of working. He turned his disadvantage into something he wanted to overcome rather than conquer him. Our time together flew by and before we realized, it was time to return to class.

Mike had done such a good job I rewarded him with a stalk of asparagus and a lemon leaf (sorrel.) He munched on them as we walked back to class happy in his success and looking forward to working in the garden next week.