The Young Gardener

[digitS']

He is so much like I was when little. He loves to make art, build art projects, cut, draw, glue tape...He is a collector of precious found objects. Rocks, feathers all manor of special sticks.He loves the garden. Planting, and picking are his favorites. He is also a gentle giant. You should see him right now playing with his baby brother. He rarely hurts him and takes a lot of baby abuse form him. So much fun.

I wonder if we should have a thread on what characteristics of the very young lead to being a gardener.

I'm very pleased that @catjac1975 's grandson has those interests and attributes. At the same time, it occurs to me that I don't . I wish that I had artistry. I don't see it. Very little interest in objects - not a collector.

My gardening grandmother did little mentoring. I was only with her for a year, as a 3 and 4 year old. Dad had gardening skills but was too busy to have a garden.

Mom was interested in health and nutrition but couldn't teach me to like Brussels sprouts ...

Living space has always interested me. I was very comfortable in a large greenhouse (& why wouldn't I be ?)

@thistlebloom has just completed a gardening class and is probably writing a thesis on it. What does it take for kids to enjoy Brussels sprouts ... er ... gardening??

Steve

 

[majorcatfish]

really @digitS' .................What does it take for kids to enjoy Brussels sprouts....... a couple good hard frosts, not being overcooked. if those 2 things are done there would be an spike in their price.....

with that said i lost my crop this year to cabbage worms and leafhoppers, possible picking the wrong variety as well... oh poo

 

[Smart Red]

I wish I could answer your questions definitively, digitS', but I can't. I might think I know why some people like to garden and others don't, but those are only suppositions or what I've hear someone say.

I grew up on a small corner lot in the city. My only experience with gardens was some relatives way up North that we seldom saw and a blind neighbor I seldom spoke to but remember helping find asparagus one spring. That and reading books of families in toil, trouble, and ultimately success -- mostly historical in nature. I probably learned more gardening techniques from homesteaders of the old West and Old English landholders then from family or friends.

One of the first things I did as a new wife and homeowner was to plant a small garden on my 1.25 acres of land. Why? I just wanted to. I felt I should. I wanted to take care of my new family in every way, and growing fresh, healthy, safe food seemed a very good way to start.

The only flowers I'd ever seen growing for Mom and Dad were Lilies of the Valley that were probably planted before we moved in when I was five, and decorated my mud pies, yet, I planted an area of old-fashion barnyard annual flower collection along the Southern side of the house that same spring -- before the grass was even in.

 

[so lucky]

I don't remember my parents ever having a garden while I was growing up, but surely they must have grown something.....
The grandmother who lived closest to us was gruff and impatient. She gardened and hunted and fished, and sewed and dabbled in various artistic endeavors. She raised dogs and canaries at various times. I could have learned a great deal from her, but I only remember her showing me how to sew on her treadle machine. I wish I had been a "favorite" of hers, but I wasn't. I don't remember ever getting a hug from her, or anything but socks for Christmas. She was unhappy and judgmental, and made life hard for a lot of people.
Nevertheless, I got a gardening gene from someone. My mom did raise flowers, so possibly it grew from there.

 

[Nyboy]

my father being youngest child, had to haul water to garden several blocks away all summer. He hated doing it, but it was depression, family could easily go hungry with out garden. As a grown up he never had any desire to garden.I learn a lot from my uncles all who live close by.

 

[baymule]

My Daddy was a son of a sharecropper. He grew up very poor, seven kids, if they wanted to eat, you darn betcha they had a garden. His father put him to work in the fields chopping weeds with a hoe as a young boy. My Daddy never finished school. You would think he would never want to see another garden, but he truly loved growing things.

I get my love of the earth from my Daddy. My earliest memories are of toddling behind him in the garden. Daddy turned the entire garden with a shovel. He didn't get a tiller until I was in Jr. High. My Daddy not only fed our family, but the neighborhood and widow women at church too.

There are times my husband asks me how I how I know something, I just shrug. I absorbed so much from my Daddy. I love gardening. I love growing food and flowers in sync with Mother Nature.

 

[Nyboy]

When i was a kid my uncle paid me $2.00 to hand turn over garden soil.

 

[thistlebloom]

Nope. No thesis here Steve.
What does it take for us to like anything? That's too hard for me to try to answer. Is it aptitude? Exposure at an early age? Accidentally stumbling on something we like to eat or do somewhere ?

My maternal grandma and great grandma were avid gardeners. Mom liked flowers. Dad had a small garden, some years mostly tomatoes. I don't know much of anything about the interests of relatives on dads side.
There were a lot of farmers on both sides so I guess I know a little more than I thought I did. Dad did subscribe to Organic Gardening and Farming from probably almost the beginning of it's publication and I read them all
front to back. Could be something there that planted a seed. Haha.

My own gardening interest was probably accidentally realized when I was 18 and got hired as a gardener by my college English teacher.
She gave me some books and I already had an affinity for dirt, so the rest is history.

Now as to the kids that I gardened with last summer...I don't know if I could pick one that I thought would develop into a gardener. If liking popsicles is a precursor to an eventual bent for growing things, then I'd have to say that 7 out of 7 will succeed as green thumbs.

 

[digitS']

I remember my grandmother's flowers and recognizing that she was a loved little lady and what she seemed mostly about was gardening. My mother used to try to get her to come in the house and sit down but she wanted to be outdoors, in her garden, hours at a time.

At a slightly older age, I had the idea that I would be a dairy farmer. That is what Dad said I could be and I didn't expect him to change his mind. It was fine with me because I liked cows. I realized that they had to be taken care of. That was something I enjoyed. In our language, nurturing and cultivating are synonyms.

There is probably a psychological description for it but wherever I go, I've always found myself there. ... I doubt that there is any acute awareness of surroundings, on my part. It's just that I like moving about and seeing the minutiae of what is there. And, being a producer within those surroundings is important to me.

As a young person there was illness and school and learning and rock climbing and making a living and how I chose to do that. But first, there was pleasure in caring for something living, enjoying my surroundings, and thinking that gardening might be something of significance.

Steve

 

[journey11]

All the ladies in my family love their flowers, so that much is just in my genes.

My parents, before they divorced when I was 13, always had a huge garden and we relied on it to feed us. They never asked us to help; I never had to hoe a row or weed or anything (which I think we should have pitched in really, at least a little.) Mom gave us each a tiny square plot sometimes to grow a mixed kiddie packet of things in. I can't say I was all that steadfast or successful a gardener, and the experience did little encourage me to eat the giant, beautiful heads of broccoli they would grow.

I spent a lot of time with my great-grandmother who lived up the street from us. Her home was a place of refuge from my bickering parents. I would follow around after her, helping to pull weeds and dead head flowers. Much like Baymule, I'd have to say the warm memories of that time spent together in the garden with her probably influenced me more than anything to love gardening. I think I've been working ever since to try to cultivate my own little place of peace and happiness in the world because of it.