Part 1 – Gardening With Kids: Planting from Seeds (using toilet rolls)

I’m not good at keep plants alive but for a long time now I’ve wanted to (successfully) do a  herb/vege garden with the children. Something simple and basic, so there’s that connection between the ground and the food we eat.

I talked to one of my friends about it, she works for About the Garden Magazine, and asked her to help me and — yay — we are on our way!

I’ve broken this gardening project into steps to make it manageable, and so it fits easily around family life (rather than allocating an entire day to attempt to achieve it all).  Because we don’t have a garden bed, I will be doing this herb garden out of the ground.  I hope this inspires others to grow a few things in their own gardens, because if I can do it (which remains to be seen) than anyone can!

Part 1 – Planting from Seeds

This first part of the gardening project is easy and simple (and fun for the kids).  We plant seeds into toilet rolls until they are seedlings and ready to be transplanted to the garden bed.

What you need

Toilet rolls

Plastic container (something like an empty ice-cream container works well)

Seedling mix (I used Searles Seed Raising Specialty Mix)

Seeds (of choice)

Permanent Marker

Seeds

Below are the seeds I’m using for my herb patch.

• Mint
• Spinach
• Oregano
• Sage
• Cherry Tomato
• Parsley
• Thyme
• Coriander

Step 1

Line toilet rolls vertically along the base of the plastic container. Place as many toilet rolls as the container will allow.

Step 2

Fill the toilet rolls with the soil seedling mix, about half way up the toilet roll. It doesn’t matter if the soil goes out of the toilet rolls and into the plastic container.

Step 3

For identification purposes, choose different colours for each herb.  Then mark each toilet roll and the relevant seed packet with the corresponding colour.

Step 4

Place a few seeds in each toilet roll, according to the colour coding. Some of the seeds are so tiny, that we sprinkled a few and hoped for the best. It’s interesting to talk about the shape, colour and size of the different seeds with the children.

Step 5

Fold the sachet containing the remaining seeds over a few times.  Then, place the sachet back in the identification packet and store in a container or zip lock bag.

Step 6

Cover the seeds with the soil, until the toilet roll is about 3/4 full.

Step 7

Son waited patiently for the watering part.

Give the seeds a good water, until the water level is sitting about half way up the container.

Step 8

Most herbs need a sunny position (guides are on the back of each packet), so we found a nice spot and watered our mini garden every couple of days.

HELLO! After only a week we had spouts.  It really does feel like magic when you see the green shooting up from the dark earth.  The kids were so excited.  Now, after a few weeks, we are ready to plant the seeds into our make-shift garden.

Watch out for the next post in this gardening series.

More

Part 1 Rainbow Garden: Paint Pots

Part 2 Rainbow Garden: Planting Nasturtiums

Disclosure

This is not a sponsored post.  I fortunately know a lovely friend who works for Searles and About the Garden Magazine, and she supplied me with the soil and expertise to help me do this. Thank you Renee x