Take a tiny seed

Springtime seed planting can carry on in gardens and window sills around the country. Here’s a couple of ideas for your seed planting.

Create… a tiny masterpiece

Look closely at tiny seeds to develop observation skills.
Make sketches of a range of seeds before sowing them in the garden or using them in seed bombs (below). The incredible range of shapes and sizes can be explored and represented through simple pencil and coloured pencil drawings. Or choose one seed to magnify for a large picture, scaling up a hundred times (is that a little maths hiding in an art activity?)

 

Grow… a quick winter salad

Plant quick-grow salad leaves in pots or a tray inside.  Cress is the familiar one but also try a range of more exotic micro salad leaves, like rocket and pea shoots (most seed companies now produce micro-leaf seed mixes and many are delivering on-line).
Micro leaves are usually ready to harvest within a week or two of sowing, a satisfyingly swift result for inquisitive children. 

The first leaves that emerge from a seed are called cotyledons, or seed leaves. The next pair are the true leaves of the plant. Some micro leaves are harvested as soon as the first seed leaves emerge, and others when the true leaves grow.

When your micro green leaves have grown, use to top a pizza, make a winter salad, or egg and cress sandwiches and enjoy!

 

Make… a seed “bomb”

Guerrilla gardening greens-up empty and abandoned areas with native wild plants or edible herbs and flowers, preferably bee and butterfly friendly varieties. A seed “bomb” is compost mixed with flour and water and your chosen mix of seeds. Once thrown and the seeds have begun to germinate, the components will slowly break apart. The soil will then provide a base for the seeds to start growing. 

Empty your chosen seeds into a bucket or tray.
Add compost to the bucket. Stir to mix everything together.
In another container, put the flour, add water stirring until you have a gloopy mixture, i.e. glue! (approximate ratios:  1 part seeds/ 6 parts compost/ 2 parts flour mixture).
Add the flour and water mixture to the compost and seeds mixture and stir it all together.
Gently roll the mix in the hand to form small balls.
Place the balls in a tray or box and allow them to dry for 24 hours. 

Take to a neglected patch of soil to bring it back to life, checking out how the seeds are growing each week.