Growing Hearts

We've been having fun growing our very own hearts in the garden this week.

To make our hearts we bought a packet of alfalfa seeds from our local garden supply store and grabbed a heart shaped cookie cutter from the kitchen draw.

We then got an old planter box and filled it with a mixture of dirt and potting soil. (Just a little side disclaimer: I am a TERRIBLE gardener and really have no idea what I'm doing in the garden!)

Bubbles then placed the cookie cutter on the dirt and filled it with seed. She then lifted the cookie cutter and moved it down to repeat the first step-it was at this point that I realised the seed would turn into a blob as soon as it was watered. I asked Bubbles to leave the cookie cutter in the soil this time and then asked her which seed she thought would grow into a better heart shape.

Finally Bubbles watered the seeds with a spray bottle. (If you're wondering why there's more than 2 hearts this is because Bubbles wanted to fill the whole box. And why is there different couloured seed? We ran out of alfalfa seed after making 2 hearts so we used some ordinary grass seed aswell.)

4 days later this is what our seed looks like-not surprisingly the one with the cookie cutter around it looks much better.

Since starting this activity we've also added a few more hearts by using heart shaped toilet rolls to keep the seed in place-the first time I did this the toilet rolls popped back into circles after soaking up the moisture in the dirt but I pushed them back into shape with well placed rocks and they're now doing much better.

Have you ever planted any sorts of shapes in your garden? How did you do it?

-Victoria

Please always supervise your infant/child at play.  Please stay within arms reach and never leave infants/children unattended.  You know you're infant/child best, use your own judgement-considering your infant/child's temperament, habits, behaviour and development before you play with a new play medium.