Seed box gifts

Over the last few weeks we have been gathering the seeds from our flowers and veg ready for use next year. This is something the gardeners used to do a lot but in this “must buy” society is something you don’t hear about that often any more. So far we have several packets drying out and apart from being in brown bags or envelopes haven’t done much with them. Cue the need for a box to put them in. Now we could have just got a box and that be that but Littleun said he fancied making one for his grandfather too so we have come up with an idea for cheep but meaningful gifts. A seed box with home-grown seeds.

You will need,

A shoe box
Pictures from mag’s, papers, seed envelopes etc of flowers, veg or anything you can think of that you would associate with gardens.
Glue
Scissors
Sticky backed plastic
Seeds, envelopes and pictures

Cut out the pictures in non-uniform shapes. Glue onto the lid and the base, cover with the plastic so all smooth and slightly water-drip proof. I have added a couple of recipes that we love doing jams and chutney.

With the seeds we have split them and decorated each envelope with pictures of the plants to show what is inside them ready to add to the box.

Simple but effective little gift for the Littleuns to make.

Gardening joys

We've been busy this week, clearing the garden and getting ready for the time to plant out. The green house still had the old tomatoes and peppers so they needed to go, then we needed to dig over some of the ground. Littleun has his own area this year and has decided to grown green beans. Quite excited he attacked it with enthusiasm till we pointed out you had to go across and not just deeper and deeper!

We also have some visitors to the garden, our friendly robin is still here and it seems that the frogs have been again.

And to show you how our cress caterpillar and beans have done Littleun took a couple more photos...

Seeds galore

What do you do when its 2 hours to go before you take Littleun out to meet his friends and he is bored? Plant seeds of course. We planted three lots of seeds, a cress caterpillar, mixed salad beans and indoor tomatoes. Littleun really enjoyed making his caterpillar out of empty egg boxes, though the cotton wool was a bit annoying when wet as he kept trying to decorate the ceiling with it, a trick I thought he wouldn’t learn until the science classes at senior school! If you would like to try the cress caterpillar you will need:

Empty egg box
Cotton wool
Cress seeds
Googly eyes
Green pipe cleaner
Glue

Cut egg box into sections, glue each part together in a wiggly line. Glue the eyes on and make two slits for the pipe cleaner. Dampen the cotton wool and put a bit in each section, sprinkle the seeds on top. Keep damp over the time and put near sunshine. Easy and fun.

The tomato set we got from our supermarket, they have started a pocket money range to encourage children into gardening. Well that was the thought but Littleun wanted so many sets that I ended up paying and the pocket money was spent elsewhere!

The lilies that we planted at Imbolc are doing well too. Three have come through out of the five though two are stronger.