A little gardening

When you live in an apartment with no outdoor space of your own planting a garden becomes a little tricky. Our apartment building has beautiful shared garden areas so we're surrounded by greenery but we do miss being able to grow our own veggies, herbs and ornamental plants.

Today we decided to start a few little gardening projects:  Grow A Tree and Eggling Crack & Grow.

First let's take a look at the Grow A Tree...

Ok, so as the name would suggest this isn't exactly a "little" gardening project. Especially considering that we're growing Giant Sequoias and Coast Redwoods - two of the largest trees in California! Of course, they start out little but eventually our trees will be too big for our apartment and we'll have to plant them in the ground somewhere. Maybe by then we'll be living in a house with a backyard - fingers crossed.

Our Grow A Tree kits

We purchased our Grow A Tree kits when we visited the Petrified Forest in the Napa Valley.
The kit contains a mini greenhouse, growing medium, seeds and white pebbles. Putting it all together is really simple: add the growing medium to the greenhouse, give it a good watering, pop the seeds on top, cover with the white pebbles and put the lid back on. Easy peasy! Ava was able to do most of it herself although I needed to assist in keeping Lola at bay! Like always, Lola desperately wanted to help her big sister but I was a little worried she might tip the whole thing out.

Pouring in the growing medium

Pouring in the growing medium

Watering the growing medium

Lola inspects Ava's work

Pebbles go on top of the growing medium and seeds

Lola helps by holding the mini greenhouse for Ava

We've placed our mini greenhouses into the fridge to trick the seeds into thinking it's winter. In twenty days' time we'll take them out and put them in a sunny window. The sudden temperature increase should make the seeds think that it's suddenly Spring and kickstart their germination.  

Mini greenhouses in the fridge

Now on to our second gardening project...

The girls received their Eggling Crack & Grow kits for Easter but we just haven't gotten around to planting them yet. Ava's Eggling will grow lavender while Lola's will grow basil.

The Eggling Crack & Grow kits contain a ceramic egg filled with a peat mixture and seeds, a terracotta dish to stand the egg in and a spare pack of seeds for just in case.

Lola's Eggling Crack & Grow basil kit

Getting started is pretty simple: carefully crack open the top of the egg with a spoon, place the egg on the terracotta dish, thoroughly water the soil until water starts to come out the bottom, then place it in a sunny window to grow. Ava needed a little help with cracking the shell but other than that it was really easy.

Ava carefully cracks the top of the egg

Tap, tap, tap...

Crack!

Watering the soil

Lola looks to see if anything's growing yet 

Two little Egglings in the window sill

I'll keep you updated with how our little gardening projects go. Fingers crossed we'll soon have basil, lavender and tiny baby trees.