The (Inside) Scoop on Planting

Planting can be a lot of fun… and everyone knows that there’s nothing like eating the literal fruits of your hard labor. But sometimes it just seems so mysterious, how some people can seem to make anything grow while others are left staring at clumps of dirt they’ve been watering for weeks and wondering what on earth they’re doing wrong

The Cohen family of Baltimore banded together with their neighbors and created a flourishing and delicious watermelon patch from scratch. So many delicious watermelons grew, they were able to give some away to other neighbors!

During lockdown, Rachelli Spector of Edgware, London created a stunning pond with her family. It has beautiful flowers, rocks, plants, and a pump. (Rachelli’s jobs were some digging and offering her family members moral support while they did the hard work!) Check out the awesome pic!

Tzirel Zar of Jackson, NJ’s entire class once planted popcorn kernels… and she excitedly took the plant home and watched it grow really tall, even taller than her! But just when the corn started to sprout… the plant died!

Eliyahu Mevorach of Yerushalayim planted some seeds from his esrog after Succos 2020 and it’s still growing! Who knows when it will sprout!? Maybe in a few years we’ll all be buying our esrogim from him and you’ll get to say you heard about his first esrog plant in an issue of Jr.!

But for many of us, planting starts with high hopes and expectations… but ends up being not quite what we had envisioned…

We planted tomatoes but squirrels ate them. We planted peppers but only one pepper grew… and there were bugs inside. Then we planted cucumbers but we only got one cucumber… and it wasn’t even good.

— Kayla Subar, 10

Los Angeles, CA

I grew a garden with my father and brothers but two different plants didn’t last. At least we still have beautiful lavender!

— Zahava S., 14

We tried to plant orange seeds from an orange, but nothing happened, it just got moldy.

— Rivka

Givat Ze’ev, Israel

My family once planted a cucumber plant and instead of cucumbers growing off the plant, cantaloupes and honeydews grew! It was very interesting and cool because I don’t know anyone else who grew cantaloupes or honeydews… especially by mistake!

—  Shaindy, 11

One time we took an apple seed and planted it next to our swings. We watered it every day but nothing happened.

— Ella and Ezzy Jaffe, 9 & 8

Clifton, NJ

My family once planted tomatoes but a stray bunny ate the plants.

— Esther Beren, 10

Lakewood, NJ