Gardening With Your Mini Mumblers

We intend to start planting some veggies soon for this years harvest, however he is currently enjoying seeing our daffodils popping up!

I found plenty of creative gardening ideas on the National Children’s Gardening Week website, so thought i’d share a few of my favourites!

Write your name in salad 

1. Fill a seed tray or pot/container with compost and lightly press it down
2. Mark out your name in the compost either using sand or by writing your name into it with a stick
3. Sow some rocket seeds along the letters of your name in the compost
4. Next, sow a border around the name by using some purple basil or purple lettuce seeds. Leave about 5cm between the letters of your name and the border.
5. Sieve or sprinkle fine soil or compost over the seeds. Be gentle so that you don’t move the seeds.
6. Water your tray using the watering can. Be gentle and make sure the watering can has a rose (sprinkler) in the spout so that you don’t wash the seeds out of place.
7. Put the seed tray on your window sill or outside in your garden or balcony. Clip your name as it growns and enjoy eating it!

Grow yourself some crazy green hair

1. Draw or paint some faces on to a plant pot, or glue a photo of you or your friend’s face onto the pot. Make sure your faces don’t have any hair on the top of them.
2. Fill your pots with some compost
3. Put the sees (grass or cress seeds work well)
4. Water the seends. Be careful not to get water onto the faces on the pot!
5. Make sure the soil stays wet and watch as crazy green hair grows out of your head. When it is long enough, try giving it a hair cut!

(You can tick this off your list of ‘100 Things to do before you’re 11’ too!

Make a Sunflower Smile 

1. Fill some small pots with compost.
2. Plant a Sunflower seed in each pot and give it a watering. Put your pot onto a window sill and water it once the seed sprouts, so the compost stays damp.
3. As your sunflower grows, tie the stem of the sunflower loosely to the bamboo cane with your garden string to support your plants.
4. Once the frosty weather is over (usually mid-May) dig a hole in your garden for your sunflower. Ideally dig it next to a wall or a fence that gets lots of sun.
5. Squeeze your sunflower and the compost it’s growing in out of your pot, and plant it in the hole that you’ve dug. Put a bamboo cane next to your sunflower and give your sunflower a good watering.
6. As your sunflower grows, make sure you tie the stem to the bamboo cane loosely with garden string. Try tying it using a ‘figure-of-eight’ knot as this will reduce any rubbing on the stem.
7. When your sunflower appears, gently tease out the seed heads to make a fantastic sunny smiling face.

If you’re really adventurous, try this next one, it looks great! We might give it a try and do a mini version with some of my little one’s old trousers that are too short!

The right trousers

1. Find  spot in the garden where you want to plant your trousers
2. Tie the legs of an old pair of jeans or trousers into knots, so that compost can’t come out of the bottom of the trouser legs
3. Push some bamboo canes into the belt hoops around the trouser waist and tie them there with string. You’ll need to tie in at least three or four canes for each pair of trousers.
4. Push the bamboo canes into the ground so that your trousers are standing up.
5. Now fill your trousers with the compost to just an inch or two below the waist
6. Give the trousers a good watering. If the compost settles and no longer comes close to the waist, top up the trousers with some more compost.
7. Now you can plant the waist of your trousers with your seeds or plants (flowering or edible plants are all fine). If you pick some tumbling plants, they’ll trail down the legs.
8. Try cutting some openings into the trouser legs and putting seeds or plants into the holes for a fun ripped jeans look!

Download all Children’s Gardening Week Activity Sheets here NCGW-Activity-Sheets-All

 

Special thanks to our sister site, Doncaster Mumbler for this super blog