First, I will admit that Colorado vegetable gardening is probably way easier than most other states’. We don’t have a lot of bug, pest, or moisture problems. We’ve been supremely lucky here in that we can spend a full day planting stuff, then spend minimal time maintaining it, and yet we still get a really good yield. It’s very nice.

Sure, we could do a lot more and possibly get better results, but our hands-off approach has worked so far.

The bad thing, of course, is that our growing season is so short. We can’t plant until May, and our first freeze occurs in late September or early October. We get three less growing months than most other regions in the country.

Since we’ve decided – or more correctly, when I overruled Anna’s motion to have a fire-pit – to start planting veggies I can say that we’ve learned an awful lot about food, plants, and farming. I can tell you why cilantro is a pain in the butt, yet so inexpensive to purchase. I can tell you ten different ways a tomato plant can fail. I can tell you that cucumbers grow like weeds, even if you don’t water them. If you like tomatoes, there is nothing better than going to a cherry tomato plant that grew naturally from the seed of last year’s batch of cherry tomatoes and eating them fresh off the vine. I can tell you that Plants that attract bees guarantee garden success. I can tell you how to make excellent compost, and how having foxes that visit your backyard are very helpful in gardening endeavors.

I can also easily say that during our summer and spring months, we eat much better in that we eat so many fresh fruits and vegetables. It doesn’t seem like there’s much of a downside to having a vegetable garden, unless you factor in the risk that it could completely fail. It hasn’t happened to us yet, but it would definitely be maddening to have a spring’s worth of effort yield zero results.

I would fully support any educational program that taught kids how to garden, how plants grow, and where vegetables actually come from – and how much work it can take! It’s useful knowledge – probably more useful than a lot of the stuff they teach kids in school these days. The only downside here is that vegetable growing requires patience, which a lot of kids don’t have. But those that stick with it – I can imagine a child cradling a tomato all the way home to show mom and dad.

So when I read an article that features a quote like this:

“As you know,” she wrote, “food-bearing plants attract pests. Maryland law restricts the use of pesticides on school grounds. Therefore, planting of food bearing plants is prohibited by MCPS.”

I laugh. Any chance at learning is ruined by the chance that what… a rat could show up? And then possibly bite someone and then the school district could be sued? Our society is ridiculous.