Children's bean experiment

I used to grow beans and peas the same way as Muse to show GS how they grew (we did the same at school many long years ago), and we grew cress in eggshells full of wet cotton wool - three shells with faces drawn on, one for each of us, and much excitement to see whose grew the fastest!

I great to watch how the bean germinates.

Some lovely ideas ladies, thank you! I've ordered some late sowing broad beans, but will definitely try the lentils too.

The cress we grew has developed and I'm going to see if he'll eat some. Although he's a notorious refuser of green food so we'll see.

These are green lentils from my food cupboard. I put them on wet kitchen roll, and left them in a dark cupboard for a few days. You can’t really see it, but there are also some fennel seeds just starting to sprout.

One simple Easter activity we did that the children loved was to fill a small container each with compost, then sprinkle grass seeds generously over it.
Then we watered and watched.
After two weeks they each had a "garden" and we hid little chocolate bunnies and chicks in the long grass ??

We also have grown all sorts of things from the larder like geekess. We put them against the edge of jars with paper between them and the compost. This way the roots were very obvious.

A friend used just scrunched up kitchen roll and had good results.

I used to grow cress seeds with my granddaughters. We cut the top off of an egg, popped it into an eggcup, drew on a face with waterproof marker then filled it with damp cotton wool and sprinkled on the seed. Within the week the egg had a good head of hair which was added to sandwiches eventually.

Many years ago I did a bean experiment with my kids using beans from the larder - kidney beans, mung beans, chick peas etc. I added a marble for fun. We started them off in small amounts of compost in wet egg boxes, then transplanted to small jam jars so the root growth was visible. I’m pretty sure they all sprouted (except the marble). It might be interesting to get bean seeds from a garden centre and use larder beans as well for comparison.

We also did it with herbs and spices - fennel seeds, whole cumin and coriander seeds, mustard seeds etc. Those were started off on wet kitchen roll in the airing cupboard.

you really need to buy a pack of runner bean or pea seeds if you do this. Supermarket fresh ones are not mature enough and the ones you cook with are heat dried....but you can grow amazing plants from fresh veg tops
www.ruralsprout.com/regrow-vegetables/

www.icreativeideas.com/13-vegetables-that-you-can-regrow-again-and-again/