tiger sheds Archives - Mummy's Little StarsMummy's Little Stars

After enjoying our success of growing salad leaves last year with the #TigerGrowAlong project we were pleased to be asked by Tiger Sheds to join in again this year, but this time with the challenge of growing some herbs, in our case Basil. Our kit arrived just over a week ago and the children were excited to get started.

Rather than using just a packet of seeds, we were provided with a really simple way of planting seeds from an innovative British young brand SeedCell. Their seeds come in handy snap off recycled cells that you just poke into the soil and they gradually absorb the moisture from underneath as they are watered, keeping the seeds protected until they germinate. The pulp then breaks down naturally nourishing the ground leaving a lovely mulch for the growing plants.

We lined our planter before the children filled it with the compost and then gently pushed the SeedCells into the soil. Everyday after school they have then been popping into the garden to water the cells, eager to see something grow that they can eventually pick and use to cook with.

Although we’ve had some great sunny days, it’s been a bit cloudy too, but we are delighted to see some life finally coming out of our pods. Our baby Basil plants have arrived and we are looking forward to following their progress over the next few weeks and hope to show you them in use in a recipe once they are old enough to pick and eat.

Keep following us for updates using the #TigerGrowAlong hashtag on twitter and look out for another post in the near future with the results of our herb growing project.

Thanks to Tiger Sheds and SeedCell for providing the goods for our little herb gardening adventure.

My children both love helping with the chores around the house (as long as it doesn’t involve tidying up their own mess!!), and one thing they are always keen to do is help out in the garden. They love growing things, watering and eating something that they have watched appear from a seed and then picked with their own hands.

Tiger Shed’s kindly sent us some seeds for salad leaves and challenged us to grow these over the last 4 weeks and show them our results.

Once I’d picked the children up from school, they couldn’t wait to start gardening with the day’s delivery, although Mister B did get a little distracted with the sack our goodies were delivered in, and before I knew it he was sack racing around the patio!

Miss M got stuck in with filling our wooden trug with soil, and sowing the seeds. They then both had a turn at watering!

We were pleased to see our first little seedlings after just a few days, which is good when gardening with children as it keeps up their enthusiasm and it became a daily task of who’s turn it was to water them.

Our final week of growing was last week, although we were off on our family holiday to Cornwall, so as much as I was hoping for a hot, sunny week, I also didn’t want the little salad leaves to dry out, but fortunately we came home to a trug full of luscious green leaves just waiting to be picked.

So we took a few cuttings, and had them for dinner! Thank you to Tiger Sheds – the children have had lots of fun and we have lots of salad leaves for the coming weeks!