Our Little Gardener (plus Cheerios)

If any of you have been following my green blog, you know that we are in the process of growing a whole bunch of veggies out on our balcony. I wanted to get AJ involved as well, and so in addition to giving him his own little watering can and letting him help drown, I mean water, our plants, we decided to do some seed-study projects.

I bought a bunch of vegetable seeds, so I opened a few of the packages and let AJ pick some out. We talked about what types of seeds they are, and how vegetables that he likes can grow from them. He chose a beet seed, 2 green beans, and 2 peas. We folded up a long piece of toilet paper (we no longer buy paper towels, I know, how strange of us!) and he elped me tuck it into a zip top baggie (ok, I still buy these). Then we added his seeds and I let him squirt some water into the bag. We zipped it up and taped it to the window, and then checked it every couple of days...

Here are the seeds on day 1.  We also threw in some marigold seeds, but those went by the wayside...we do have some rogue marigolds growing outside in the windowboxes amongst my lettuces, so at least we did end up with a FEW flowers out there this year! Ha!

AJ  liked to poke at the seeds, so they all ended up working their way to the bottom of the bag. His friend, Raccoon, also liked checking out our experiment...that's Raccoon there in AJ hand.

Here are our seeds just over a week later. AJ thought it was cool that they were sprouting "wiggly" roots.  At this point, I wasn't sure if the peas were going to sprout...

but eventually they did!

Two of AJ's earlier potted plant experiences were flooded one time too many, so when one of the green bean sprouts started pushing on the zipper of our baggie, we headed outside to plant the beans and peas in those 2 pots (right and center).

Here is AJ trying to use my mommy-sized trowel.  I redirected him very quickly after taking this picture!  He really does like to help and be involved though. It's pretty cool!

Now, we go outside (almost) every day to water and inspect how all of his and our plants are doing. AJ's little sprouts are growing bigger every day, and the peas have sent out little tendrils and started climbing up our balcony's chicken wire.  I hope they will eventually make some pods for him to eat for dinner!

In a previous post, AJ planted some other seeds into a pot at a friend's place, and here is the update on that project.  The seeds have come up and are doing great!  

These, too, have attached themselves to our fencing and should make some flowers in a bit (if the sun would ever shine more than 2 days in a week!). I think he's going to be excited when that happens, since he even wants to save the dandelions that he picks at the parks and put them into a vase when we get home. :)

On a completely unrelated note, during this rainy past couple of weeks, we have had to come up with some more indoor activities. AJ's grandpa John gave him a cute book a while ago that has little spots to place Cheerios while you read the story. We hadn't played with that in a while, so we had a nice, long snack-time that day reading and eating the cereal.  I just thought it was cute how careful he was trying to be when placing the Oh's in their little spots...