“One for the snail and one for the crow, one to
rot and two to grow.” There are many
versions to this old planting adage; this is the one I had running through my
head last week as I poked the last of the seeds into the warm, damp soil. It
was coined in the days when corn was planted in hills. The simple rhyme
probably helped young children tasked with the planting (light work on a farm)
to get sufficient seed into the hills, which do need a healthy cluster of
stalks to make a proper crop. The rhyme probably prevented errors, both by
young farmhands eager to get rid of the seed and the job, and those pokey and
parsimonious in their allotted duties.
It is the middle of June, and I was
feeling a little tardy, especially since the crop that was to grow from this
little hill of pale slivers was not 70-day corn, but 110-day winter squash. Usually,
I plant the squashes a few weeks before the traditional Memorial Day
setting-out date, in little paper pots. The idea is that the plants will have a
jump on the squash bugs and the striped cucumber beetles that are such a menace
here at the Village. The little striped cuke beetles are the worst, though
small and rather pretty. They seem to appear out of thin air just as the first
true leaves emerge on squash seedlings. Cucumber beetles are voracious, and for
something so tiny, they can make quick work of the young plants, turning the thick
cotyledons and that first small leaf fan into lace within a day or two. They’re
quick to evade pinching fingers, dropping upside-down onto the ground and
burrowing into the crumbly soil, or taking flight from right in between my
menacing finger and thumb. Off they go, disappearing heaven-knows-where until
they see I’ve left the area—then devouring, devouring while my back is turned. One
for the snail.
But squash hates to be transplanted. Even
in paper pots, intended to make the least disruption from cold frame to soil,
transplanted squashes sit there and sulk. Their leaves go yellow. All this
time, they’re sending out hormonal stress signals. There’s nothing to draw in
the varmints like the scent of weakness. It’s the plant equivalent of bleeding
into shark-infested waters. The only thing a squash hates more than transplant
shock is cold. Frost and cold soil are the big early killers of squash starts.
They mustn’t go in the ground until the weather has settled and the earth is
warm. …one to rot.
While crows don’t tend to pick protein-rich squash
seeds out of the ground as they will corn, there are a rooster and his two hens
hereabouts who would be happy to find such a prize while scratching their way
across the fresh-turned field. …one for the crow.
If you have planted a garden yourself, you
know the seed packet contains an attrition rule of its own: the farmer is
instructed to plant “4-5 seeds per hill, thinning to 2-3.” I counted out the
seeds—4 per hill, row after long row, to fill the space as best I could. The
rhyme and the math seemed linked, and I puzzled over the connection between the
charming adage and the more scientific calculus of life and loss.
Today, a week after planting, the seeds
are up. At least, some of them are. Sure enough, if each hill has one, two, or
at most, three plants. Where are the third, fourth, or fifth? Have they gone to
rot or to snail? Or were they able to count? My turn to burst out, yours to
lay low and succumb. Room, among us, for only two to thrive. What would have happened if I had ignored the
adage, and only planted the three seeds I would ultimately “need?” Looking at
the rhyme and the science bear themselves out, hill after hill, I thought again
how gardening is like this: part ancient lore, part science, part experience,
and part the pure, glorious chance—the bearing-out of some cosmic plan far
beyond the control of she who counts and sows.
