Nice planting ideas with kids

[2021ishere2021]

Any rice easy plant ideas with a 3 year old and a 4 year old? I have done a lot with cress already x

• nice I mean!

Garden peas is a nice one. I am the most ungreenfingered person I know and we managed to grow some last year.

Potatoes - cut the root off any potato and stick it in a bad of soil and ignore for months.

Have a look for planting hacks. There are loads of fun things you can do with plant and vegetable cuttings that are quicker than seeds.
Bulbs are a good one too this time of year.

Yy to peas - and you can eat them as pea shoots too - so if you sow a double batch you can plant out one for growing in the garden and just keep cutting the other row of seedlings back. My two were always interested in quick results - and pea shoots are very fast (and taste good too)

Sun flowers can have a competition over who's is tallest.

Big seeds which are are easy to handle and sprout quickly are best. Nasturtium seeds can be started off in pots and both flowers and leaves are edible. If you use a clear container and fill with any soil, the children can see the roots forming,

You could also encourage them to build a bug house. Then they will have great fun watching the different insects going in and out.

If you collect up loo roll/tinfoil, middles put them in an ice cream tub you can plant sweet peas. These can be started now. Put the middles in the tub of soil and dampen. Keep them in a light room, not too warm. Plant the seeds and watch them grow. When 4 leaves appear. Take the top two off. Put some small sticks in each roll and the each plant will twine around. In April plant outside, keeping the toilet roll around the roots.
You don’t have to use the loo rolls but they are fun, because if you leave the cardboard an inch above the soil, the children can decorate them or put there names on them. If you keep a ruler and a pad by the pit, the children can keep a diary of the growth.

Later in the year the children can plant Nigella seeds. They have beautiful flowers and, if you leave some on the plant, make amazing seed heads. My children call Ed them Cinderella coaches.

Fun ideas:

Jam jar, cylinder of blotting paper inside it, half an inch of water in the bottom. Tuck a runner bean seed between blotting paper and jar about half way up. You will be able to see it produce both roots and shoot. If you can't get blotting paper, you could try filling the jar with kitchen paper. We did this in infant school (back in the days when blotting paper was in daily use). You might even be able to transplant it successfully into soil when it's too large for the jar, and go on to get beans off it.

Take a large tin and cut the bottom off it, so you have a drainpipe shaped thing. Put small potato in the centre and put the lid back on so there's light only from one end. Potato sill start sprouting and send shoot towards light. When it's about to burst out into the light, move the lid to the other end - the potato will do a U-turn and start growing the other way.

I take it if you've been doing cress you've also cut disks off the top of carrots and parsnips and grown them. And grown bean sprouts.