Getting Dirty In The Kitchen

No! Not THAT kind of dirty. P3 will be here today and one of the things we'll do is plant some seeds in the little Jiffy greenhouse. The sowing of seeds will take place on my kitchen counter. No particular reason for using cilantro and lavender seeds other than he likes to eat cilantro and enjoys having lavender oil rubbed on his feet before going to bed. He's also collected a few apple and orange seeds to plant. One year we planted grass seed only and he was amazed by it. If I remember correctly, the "Don't Throw It, Grow It" book was recommended by Kathy at Cold Climate Gardening.

Here he is on "seed sowing day" in 2007. I'm doing my best to spark his interest in growing things. He has a small collection of house plants here at our house that he's responsible for watering every week. He's learned the names and a couple weeks ago he had the idea to use his ruler to measure how tall they were and record that information on piece of paper. So many lessons learned on that day.

One day last spring he came out of kindergarten carrying a paper bag that contained a peat pot with a couple of sunflower sprouts.

He tended to the sprouts at my house and when they were big enough to be transplanted we put them in a pot with some petunias where they did quite well and he was able to observe their progress. Later in the summer, we saw goldfinches eating the sunflowers seeds from the flower heads. Another lesson learned.