How to Plant an Herb Box with Your Kids

Showing your kids how to grow their own herbs doesn’t have to just be done for educational purposes; it can also be a lot of fun, quality time spent together as well. To start you’ll need to decide with your kids what kind of herb box you are going to grow together. One way to make the process more fun is to choose a theme for the herb box, such as making a cooking herb box for a specific dish. For example, you could grow a pizza herb box or a spaghetti box. Or you could make the theme be potpourri. Your kids could grow fragrant herbs to dry and create their own sachets.

Once you’ve decided which herbs you are going to grow you’ll need to purchase the seeds. Take a large plastic cup for each kind of seed you are planting. Label the cup with the type of herb it is or create a label using a craft stick. Fill the cup at least 2/3 full with potting soil. Sprinkle one type of seed on top of the soil. Sprinkle a little more soil on top of the seeds. Spray the surface of the soil with a spray bottle until it’s moist. Cover the seeds and cup with plastic wrap to create a greenhouse for your seeds. Continue to do this for each type of seed that you are growing. Make sure that you aren’t growing too many different types of plants because they will need to fit in the container or box that you have chosen and you don’t want to crowd the plants.

Remove the plastic wrap once the seeds have sprouted. Continue to mist the cup a little every day. If it looks like a lot of the seeds are coming up you will want to pull some of them out of the cup. This process is called ‘thinning’ the herbs. You want to give fewer plants a chance to get bigger and stronger versus having a lot of weaker plants that won’t do well. As soon as the seedlings are big enough to hold by the stem you can transplant them to the herb box.

Make sure the bottom of the herb box has drainage holes. Cover the holes with shards of clay pot or add a layer of gravel to the bottom of the box. This will help it drain well. Then fill the herb box with potting soil. The kind of potting soil with fertilizer in it may be beneficial to your plants and help them grow stronger. Water the soil before planting. Plant just a few of your strongest seedlings into the box of each type of herb. Section the box so that you have the same type of plant in each area. The plants will probably grow together and it will be easier to harvest when they get bigger.

Continue to water the herb box as needed. Herbs don’t require a ton of water and they don’t like to stay wet. If you over water them they will just die off. Wait to water until they just start looking a little wilted. Make sure the box is in a sunny area and is well drained.

Once the herbs are big enough you can harvest them and add them to your favorite recipe. If you are doing a fragrance herb box you will need to dry the herbs. Cut a few stems of each type of herb and tie the bottoms of the stems together with twine. Hang the herbs upside down until they are completely dry. Then crush the dried herbs and add them to a bowl for potpourri or put it in your own sachet bag.

Thanks to Full-time Nanny.com

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