Gardening Merit Badge

Two of the nine requirements are seasons

Requirement 2 grows twelve plants: six vegetables through harvest and six flowers through flowering, half of each from seed and half from seedlings.

Requirement 8 is ninety days on five of its six routes.

Everything else on the badge (hazards, nutritional values, a germination test, a visit, pollination, pests, careers) can be done in a few evenings. These two decide when you finish.

Requirement 8 has no short route

8(e) is the only route without a stated ninety days, and it is not the quick one. A super has to be filled before it can be removed, which is the bees' timetable and a beekeeper's permission, not yours.

Weekly observations are recorded whichever route you take, and the results are discussed with your counselor.

8(f) and requirement 2 overlap. Ask before you plant

8(f) is grow a garden of your own using soil from seed or plantings to harvest or for 90 days, whichever is earlier, with at least three types of plant approved by your counselor. Requirement 2 is twelve plants grown to harvest and flowering.

They are the same activity on the same calendar. Whether one garden can satisfy both is your counselor's call, and it is a question to ask before the first seed goes in, because there is no way to answer it retrospectively. If the answer is no, you need two plots or two seasons, and you want to know that in March.

The germination test belongs before the sowing

Requirement 4 tests 100 seeds for germination, works out the percentage, and asks why some did not come up.

Requirement 2 sows six plants from seed.

Doing the test first tells you what proportion of your seed is viable, which is exactly the thing you want to know before you sow, and it is numbered two requirements later.

Requirement 7's pests arrive while requirement 2 is growing

Five garden pests identified, with two solutions each and at least one of them organic. Insects and diseased plants turn up in a growing garden, not in a book.

If you have a garden going for requirements 2 and 8, that is where four or five of your pests will be. Photograph them when you see them.

What this page is

The Gardening merit badge, drawn so the two long clocks and the question that has to be asked before planting are visible at the start rather than discovered in July. It is not a copy of the requirements: each step is a short label with a link to the official requirements, which are what actually governs and which change from year to year.