Why should we introduce kids to gardening?

When adults pass along garden memories to the children in their lives, the fond lessons stick forever and keep on growing.

For me, it was my grandmother, with her vegetable garden, when I was in elementary school.  Although, my parents, unwittingly, may have sent me a bit in the opposite direction, by making me pull weeds when I was in junior high!

Being from the Victory Garden generation, my grandmother grew much of her own food, including a fair number of vegetables that I wasn’t too keen on until I was an adult.  And poke salat, one of HER favorites, I STILL haven’t learned to appreciate.

Even tomatoes weren’t my favorites until much later. No, it was definitely her sweet corn that I have the fondest memories of. And even though it was definitely the sweetest corn in the whole wide world, at least to me, that’s not why I remember it so vividly.

It was the fact that she grew it just for me, in the face of lack of pollination in our summer Texas heat, and the evil corn ear worm, (which I always had to share at least half of every ear with). Even my family always let me have the bulk of the harvest, since it was more than apparent in my dinner-time excitement when my grandmother’s corn was on the menu, that corn made me a very happy child.