Our Window Sill Garden!

     I didn’t realize it had been so long since I wrote a post for this blog. I’ve been sick (and taking care of sick ‘ens ) so I’ve spent my time catching up the family blog. But let’s have some fun on here today, okay? :)

     I think I’ll start with our most recent project (and we’ll work backwards in future posts :) ) -- Our Window Sill Garden!

     The girls and I were at Target some time back and decided to walk through the seasonal springtime stuff. We found the displays of seed packets and of course the girls just HAD to get some. So we did. :) But where were we going to plant them? Yea, I didn’t think that part through when I told them they could each pick a packet. So we brought the seeds home and they got put on the counter. And that’s where they sat. And sat. And sat. Well some time went by and the seeds were still on the counter when Abby brought home a bean in a baggie with dirt and a wet cotton ball from preschool. She taped it to the sliding glass doors and that is where it stayed. A few days later we noticed it was growing really well! Especially for just a bean.

     Anyway, to make the rest of the story short, it occurred to me that we could re-create that environment for the seeds from the store to help them grow. (A terrarium-type of thing.) And recently enough most of us came down with the stomach bug so we had an ample supply of empty Gatorade bottles. So, without any further ado, here’s what we finally did.

     I grabbed 8 of the empty Gatorade bottles (I figured since we had 4 kinds of seeds, we could do 2 terrariums a piece to increase our chances of success J) and used a box cutter to cut off the top third of the bottle. Then to give it a way to sit nicely back on the body of the bottle, I cut the top a little more at the widest part of the rounded part.

 

We took the bottoms all out on the patio and filled the bottoms with rocks.

 

     Using the bag of soil that I found in the laundry room (from a couple Easters ago when the Easter bunny brought Kyleigh all sorts of planting items) to fill the bottom “cups” most of the way.

     Then the girls grabbed their seed packets.

 

     They made holes in their cups of dirt for the seeds to go into. Abby picked pumpkin seeds so we planted 3 seeds in both of her cups. Kyleigh picked poppy seeds; since those seeds are so tiny, she scattered a few around the dirt.

tiny poppy seed

     I thought it might be fun to try to grow some zucchini. :) (We LOVE zucchini bread around here!) Lastly, Abby wanted to save the seeds of an apple a little while back, so we tried planting those too.

     The girls covered the seeds with a little more dirt and we brought all of the containers inside. The only place we really have inside to set the plants is on a desk we have in our dining room that sits in front of the window.

 

     After getting them all arranged, we spritzed them with some water. Then we replaced all of the lids and sat back. We do plan on making labels so we don’t forget which container has which seeds.

Abby's Shasta Daisy to attract ladybugs.

          With our mini terrariums all finished, the girls wanted to do more. (There’s always something else, isn’t there? :) ) So we went ahead and did the Busy Bug Gardens they got for Easter from the hubby’s parents.


Kyleigh's Bee Balm to attract bees.

  

     The bug gardens got put on the desk in the window along with all the other planted seeds.

 

Now if only we could get some sunshine instead of all these clouds and rain we’ve had lately! The girls and I are super excited to watch the plants [hopefully] grow!