Thursday, April 22, 2010

Spring Planting

As much as I love plants, I am very ashamed to admit that I have a toxic effect when starting them from seeds. Mature, adult, rational plants tolerate me; seeds run screaming in terror.

Which is why I decided to involve the children. This way, if the seeds did their usual "I'm too terrified of you to poke my head out of the soil" routine, I could soothe my ruffled feelings by blaming in on the children.
(Motherhood is all about properly assigned guilt).

After the seeds were all planted and snugly tucked into their little beds, Peter and Boo had to draw a picture of a plant and all it's main parts. I suppose one could make an interesting psychological examination of their individual pictures. Boo's picture had a HUGE flower that matched the size of the bloom on her head, and two tiny twiggles of roots (yes, twiggles. It sounds descriptive. Shut up, it's my blog.)
Peter's picture had roots that could anchor a forest of oak trees and a skinny stem with something rather like a leaf on top. Accompanying the spaghetti network of roots were lots and lots of worms. Peter declared that his tree needed worms to maintain its healthy root system.

True to form, half of my plants did very well, and the other half decided to give up before they started. The kale all came up and marched themselves off merrily into my garden, but the tomatoes were very undecided as to whether they were going to amount to anything. I think I had three plants out of the 10 or so I planted. The peppers were complete sissies and never did anything at all, probably because they got too cold. Divas.
At this rate, we'll have barrels of Kale and a tomato for the entire summer. The kids will be so delighted.

2 comments:

Wishful Acres Farm said...

Don't worry, I'll keep you supplied! You'll never be hungry for cool tomato plants while I can help it, lol.

Ellen said...

Absolutely love the kids pictures and your descriptions of them! :) What exactly do you use your kale for, out of curiosity? We have a 50/50 track record with starting our garden plants from seeds.... certainly haven't mastered it. Maybe someday - it's a dream of mine to have a small green house at our "next home." LOL Maybe one day I'll actually get one! ;)