Now I don’t know about you, but when it comes to the garden you cannot have more fun than swimmin’ for taters!
That goes for dirt, too, because potatoes grow underground and harvesting them requires digging–and lots of it!
But what kid doesn’t like to dig? None that I know of and this harvesting potatoes business is a lot like digging for buried treasure.
I mean the squeals that erupt when a child hits “gold” are incredible. Although the battles can be equally spectacular. When you have several little bodies scoping out the same general vicinity it’s bound to happen…
“It’s mine!”
“No, I found it first!”
“Get your hands off MY potato!”
“Kids, kids–these sweet potatoes are for ALL of us and you know what we’re going to do with them?”
One bright child shouted out, “Eat them!”
“That’s right! We’re going to make sweet potato french fries and sweet potato pie!”
Hoots of joy explode across the garden. “I love sweet potato pie!”
Of course you do. We all do! And harvest resumes in earnest, the silly little tug-of-war long forgotten. Though to be honest, it did get a little dicey there for a while and I have the broken potatoes to prove it! But the kids had fun harvesting what they grew, tossing vines and root sprigs to the compost pile, looking forward to chowing down the produce. Suffice it to say, you will want to send home a note prior to harvest: swimming through dirt, dress accordingly.
And that’s what counts: completing the cycle of growing your own vegetables. We plant the seeds, we help them grow, we harvest them, eat them and compost what we don’t use for next season’s crop. Beautiful, isn’t it?
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