Late last summer my 7-year-old granddaughter informed me that her mom (my daughter-in-law) told her that next summer she could be in charge of the family garden. “That’s great,” I said and didn’t think much more about it until I started looking for pumpkins for my front walk. They were expensive!
“I’ve got it,” I thought. Maybe my granddaughter and I can grow our own next year. When I told her my idea, she didn’t say a word. She just came over and hugged me. I interpreted that to mean she loved the idea.
Some days later this thought popped into my head: She and my husband, her Baba, love watermelon. Maybe we could grow our own watermelon too. After all, just pumpkins in our garden made it seem too lonely.
Now it’s February and I have begun to wonder what we need to do to “grow our own.” I asked my questions online: “growing your own …” fill in the blank. And I got a lot of options. I picked three and printed them.
Here’s some of what I learned:
- Watermelon require 70-85 growing days; pumpkins require 110-114 growing days.
- Both are planted on a small hill – watermelon about 6 feet apart and pumpkins about 3 feet apart
- Both need lots of sun
- Watermelon have about 5 melons per plant; pumpkins have 3-5 vegetables per plant.
- Pumpkins can be planted with companion plants like nasturiums, marigold or petunias (to help prevent bugs)
Question: Where do we get seeds?
Next up is for my granddaughter to read these. She’s in second grade and reads everything she can get her hands on. She has some trouble with comprehension of big words. I’ll help her with that. Plus we will discuss where to put the garden and how big to make it. My goal is to keep the garden manageable for weeding (which may be my challenge to keep her expectations realistic).
I’m excited. Pretty soon we’ll go shopping for seeds.
I’ll keep you posted (literally) as we go along.
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