You Don't Need Packs of Seeds, Save Them When Cooking!

Although I'd bought a few packs of 99p seeds before the lockdown began, I also started noticing them more and more whilst chopping up fruit to eat.

We always have fresh tomatoes in the house so I thought they would be the easiest to experiment with. 

 

I simply scooped out the seeds from a couple of plum tomatoes and placed them on to a piece of kitchen paper, where I also wrote on what they were. 

I then placed the kitchen paper holding the seeds in an empty plastic container. A takeaway container from the days when we had a weekly Friday night treat! Oh, how I miss those days! These were the perfect size and I could use the lid to make a makeshift mini greenhouse and keep them warm. Any other container covered with clingfilm to cover would do.

I added some water to the seeds so the paper was wet, but not so much it would be dripping.

Then I popped the lid on and put them in a warm place in the kitchen.

I left them to see if they would show signs of germination. It took a couple of days for the tomato seeds to germinate. You can just about see the little white shoots appearing in the photograph.

I then chose the best four seeds (running out of room to grow more!) and transferred them into the little pots and covered them with some compost mentioned in the earlier post Lockdown Gardening - Using Dipping Sauce Containers to Plant Seeds to

 carry on growing.

I'm really enjoying experimenting with gardening and also teaching my children (and myself!) about where the food we eat comes from and how wonderful nature is.

After another two or three days, they've started to grow. I'm not sure how they'll do in the long run but having taken less than a week to get to this stage it's a fun little project to give the children an interest in gardening. And didn't cost a thing!