Grassy grass grass

With all of the gardening prep going on at our house lately, Anne has started to get very interested in plants and seedlings. I thought we should try to grow something, to give her a sense of the process. It's still a little early to start our seedlings for our garden, and besides, I wanted something a little more toddler friendly (i.e., able to be touched/experienced/loved on without too much damage), so I searched for another plant that would make a good project.

We decided to grow wheatgrass. It's the perfect plant for kids. It's hardy, it doesn't ask for much, and it grows so quickly that sometimes I feel like I can see it growing, which means that it offers pretty quick results, nice when you're dealing with toddler-sized attention spans. Not to mention that it will make a perfect Easter centerpiece, and we won't have to use that crinkly cellophane grass that makes the cats throw up. We could even harvest it for wheatgrass juice once it's full grown, if we were so inclined (I'm not -- whatever the health benefits might be: YUCK.)

Here is how we grew our wheatgrass. First, we ordered some seed online (Todd's Seeds offers inexpensive, organic products, so that's where we got ours). Once it arrived, we sprouted the seeds for a day in a jar of water that we changed every eight hours or so. Then we filled a small pot with a layer of rocks (for drainage -- if your container has drainage holes, you don't need to do this). Added some pre-moistened potting soil, scattered the sprouted seeds in a thick layer on top (so that almost no soil was showing), and covered the whole thing with a damp paper towel. And waited.

Within two days, our sprouts were an inch high, so we took the paper towel off and moved them to the light. Wheatgrass doesn't like direct sunlight, so we keep our pot on the radiator cover in the kitchen, just under the window. We've been watering our seeds twice a day with a plant mister and they've been growing like crazy.


Anouk thought the little seeds were babies, and she calls her grass her "baby grass." Several times a day we take the pot down and check to see how it's grown, check the soil, and give it a nice stroke. The other day I caught her trying to brush the grass with a tiny Barbie brush, and that was my cue to move it to higher ground. :)

Here's the Woody Guthrie song that this post title comes from, btw -- so simple that it shouldn't be a favorite but it is. Have you ever grown anything with your kids? What did they think?