At the moment, a certain supermarket is onto a really cool thing – giving out little pots of flowers or veggies with every purchase over R150. I know many children are hounding their parents to go shopping there to increase their collection, but fear not if you don’t get it right.
You can easily grow your own veggies without any fancy little pots.
All you need are egg boxes, seeds and soil (seedling soil really works the best – but it is not altogether necessary).
Get a group of children together and share resources.
One bag of seedling soil goes a really long way.
If you don’t have any money for seeds, ask friends who have gardens if they have any to spare.
Marigolds grow very quickly from the seeds that you can harvest from a dead flower.
So do lots of other things – like tomatoes.
Simply fill the egg boxes with soil – poke a little hole in the middle – about 1cm deep – and plant a seedling.
Water gently and put them on a windowsill or somewhere light.
They don’t like direct sunlight too much because then they dry out.
Make sure that you keep them moist – if the soil gets dry your teensy baby will never sprout.
The time it takes to sprout depends on what seeds you have planted, some spout much quicker than others – for instance, sweet alyssum starts sprouting in about three days but onions take around 10 to 15 days to poke their little green shoots into the world.
Once they do start sprouting, plant the whole egg box in the ground.
Or you can carefully cut the little sections apart and scatter them around your garden or into pots.
The egg box material is biodegradable.
Just (obviously) make sure you do not use plastic egg boxes!
You can even have fun making your own little signs out of ice-cream sticks or bits of a cardboard box so that you know which seeds are which.
Consider having a race with your friends and see whose seeds sprout first.
By the way – if you want to know how to make a veggie bed the size of a door – my book – Sibo and the Veggie Bed is available this month as a free read on the website (https://sibo.co.za).
Explore your green-fingered side guys!
Have fun.
Sibo
