Homegrown
Written By Caroline Bates
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You don't have to dig up half the lawn — or even have a lawn — to introduce your kids to vegetable gardening (and eating). All you need is a sunny spot, some deep pots, and a few bags of soil.
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The summer the tomatoes grew lush and tall as though they were magical beanstalks climbing to the sky, I carried my young son on my back and we went picking. And eating. "One for you, and one for me," I said, popping a cherry tomato in his mouth and another in mine, savoring its sun-warmth and sweetness. One led to two and then three, and soon we stopped counting. As tomato juice streamed down our chins, we giggled wildly and gorged on tomato candy until we couldn't eat any more.
Many tomato seasons later, my son told me that was his earliest childhood memory, and one of his fondest. At least I got one thing right, I thought. From the time he could toddle, Eliot loved to be in a garden grubbing around in dirt, playing with pill bugs and planting his own sunflower or a bush of peas. Our little cultivated patch of yard taught him lessons in how to live and how to eat — not that he could easily escape them. My work as a food writer exposed him to farmers' markets at a very early age. He understood that vegetables didn't spring from the supermarket, shrink-wrapped in plastic. A real person had grown them. And so could he.
We gave Eliot his own plot, and in the process learned the wisdom of starting small. The pride he felt after planting a row of summer squash gave way to sobs when cutworms sheared it clean in the night. My fault: I'd forgotten all about protecting the seedlings with tinfoil collars. But I'd rushed things — he wasn't ready for a garden that size. Growing some crops in pots, however, would be nearly pestproof and risk-free. He warmed to the idea, especially when he heard that it meant a trip to the nursery.
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