Growing Food and Kids

On Fridays during the WordCount Blogathon, I’m republishing popular posts from the past. This one originally appeared in August 2009.

Gardening is a lot like parenting; they both involve guilt. It happens every summer: I leave a couple of tomatoes or cucumbers on the windowsill above my kitchen sink to ripen, and before I know it, I’ve neglected them until they’re overripe, brown and spotted, and have to be thrown away. I’ve been too busy working, playing with the kids, cleaning house, or something else to actually use them. I wait until my husband’s outside with the kids or at night when everyone’s asleep to pitch them in the trash.

The feeling I get throwing out a few tomatoes or a bowl of unsnapped green beans is familiar. As a mom, I’m always making choices that leave me with a little guilt. Should I clean the kitchen and do the laundry or sit down and play with my two-year-old and his Fisher-Price farm set? Should I finish my work on deadline or should I go ride bikes with my four-year-old, who’s just ditched his training wheels? Should I have let the kids miss their nap to go swimming? Did I lose my patience too quickly when they poured shelled peas all over the kitchen floor?

For parents, guilt is part of the territory. For gardening parents, I guess it’s even worse. And throwing away a few overripe vegetables isn’t the only source of gardening guilt — there are other things too, like:

• Forgetting to weed.
• Neglecting to pick ripe vegetables and letting them rot on the vine.
• Getting takeout for dinner even though you have plenty of fresh veggies in the garden.

It could drive you crazy if you let it. As a parent, I’ve learned to loosen up, let some things go and realize I can only do my best. As a gardener, I’m still trying to do that. Here are a few of my ideas for assuaging gardener’s guilt:

Compost. We’ve just started composting at our house, so it’s too soon to tell if this will help me feel better about any vegetables we aren’t able to use — at least I’ll know the veggies that go unpicked or uneaten won’t be a complete waste; they’ll help make next year’s garden fruitful.

Share. If we’re out of town or just too busy to tend to the garden for a few days, it makes me feel better to know that somebody is eating the produce, even if it’s not us. We’ve invited neighbors, family members and friends to come by and pick peas, corn, squash, whatever’s available. And of course, we often share jars of homemade pickles or bags of already-picked veggies that we can’t eat or don’t have time to preserve. (Word to the wise: many of the people who like to eat fresh veggies don’t want to actually get out in the garden and pick them, so just spreading the word won’t always do the trick. On the other hand, some people are happy to take any produce available — so make sure you’re specific about when and how often it’s ok to harvest your garden, or there may not be enough left for your own family.)

Partner. If keeping up with your garden and its yield turns out to be too much for you, consider joining forces with a partner. I haven’t tried this technique, but my first cousin in Chicago shares a garden with a neighbor. Together with their children, they have a lot more hands to help plant, pick, and preserve than if they were each gardening alone. And it sounds like a lot of fun too.

Do you experience gardening guilt? How do you get around it?