Grow Seeds Indoors With Kids – Save on Flowers

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Have you ever tried to grow seeds indoors with your kids?  You can save a lot of money on flowers by spending only a few dollars on seeds and starting the seeds indoors.  Growing seeds indoors with kids is a great activity to when you have extra time at home and you all will love watching the seeds grow.

Being a stay at home mom can be really rough sometimes, especially when you are trying for the hundredth time to find something fun and frugal to do – I understand.  Grow seeds indoors with kids – they will love it!  You will love that they love it!

Hang on and I’ll share just how easy and frugal it is to grow seeds indoors with kids.  The best part, you probably have everything you need at home already – but if you don’t, you won’t need to buy much – I promise!

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Grow Seeds Indoors With Kids? 

Yes!  Katrina, where did this crazy idea come from?

Grow seeds indoors with kids using egg cartons! Your kids will love it! Share on X

Quarantine life from Covid-19 can get pretty boring at times.  A couple days ago the weather changed! It was gorgeous outside and starting to get green all over.  Even though, the day before, my yard was covered in a blanket of snow. 

Spring has arrived and that always makes me think of Mother’s Day.  Mother’s Day is the day my family buys me flowers and I love it! 

This year, I was thinking that we could save some money on flowers instead by growing our own!  And, why not do it with my kids, using the stuff we had around the house? Right?

Missing My Green Thumb

Let me be the first to tell you that I don’t have a green thumb, it’s more of a faded green color.  Even though I’m not a gardening pro, I have had good luck growing herbs for cooking in small pots in my kitchen window, so I figured we could give some flowers a try. 

I’ve never grown a bunch of flower seeds indoors before, but since it’s only April, I have some time to try before we can plant flowers outside anyways.  If this little frugal growing project doesn’t work out, we can always buy flowers in May like we usually do. 

Frugal Gardening

My motivation for trying to grow seeds indoors with kids was simply to save money on the flowers that we usually buy every year, and to have a fun and frugal activity to do with my kids.  Simple as that. 

I think the best crafts and activities are the inexpensive ones, so this was a perfect idea to try.  I also love that because we are growing the seeds indoors, we can watch them grow! 

Not Just A One-Day Activity

To grow seeds indoors with kids is not just a one-day activity – which is awesome!  After the initial seed planting is done, there is daily checking and watering to do.  Plus, with the set up we have made, we are rotating the seeds each day to make sure they are getting the same amount of sunlight.

Another fun part about this activity is that your kids can pick out their own flower seeds! My daughter said this was her favorite part. She also loves to get dirty – so planting seeds in the dirt sounded like a great time to her! My youngest son, on the other hand, had to be wearing gardening gloves or he was not going to participate.

Yes, all of our kids are different.

Flower Seeds & Time Matter

Before you start planting make sure you pick seeds that you have the time to grow.  For example, a lot of flowers need 45 days or more to bloom.  Look at each seed packet and make sure you have enough time to grow them. 

If it’s early in spring, you should have plenty of time, but if it’s closer to summer already, you may not have enough time to grow your seeds and still enjoy your flowers before summer is over. 

I made the mistake of buying flower seeds that needed 180 days to bloom. Real smart move huh?  I won’t even try to plant them this year, but hopefully will remember I have them and can start them much earlier next year. 

Just make sure you check the bloom date before you plant your seeds.  I did buy other seeds too, that have a shorter bloom date – but I was still bummed out that I got some of the wrong ones.

How To Grow Seeds Indoors With Kids

Before you plant your seeds you need to gather necessary supplies, your kids, and be ready to get a little bit messy.  I’d recommend doing the seed planting outdoors and then you can move the seeds indoors to grow.

Gather These Supplies:

1. Paper Pulp Egg Cartons – NOT Styrofoam – as many as you want
2. Flower Seeds
3. Potting Soil
4. Small cups or spoons
5. Water
6. Tray or pan
7. Scissors
8. Popsicle Sticks or Sticky Notes (optional)

How To Save Money Planting Your Own Seeds

Save your egg cartons!  Eggs cartons can be used for so many different things and you never know when you will need them.  We eat a lot of eggs in our house, so we tend to have a lot of egg cartons lying around. 

When I’m not trading egg cartons for fresh farm eggs with friends, then I tend to have a big stack of them for whatever we need them for. 

Save money planting your own seeds indoors! Your kids can help! Share on X

To grow seeds indoors with kids, you need a bunch of egg cartons, but only the paper pulp cartons, not the styrofoam ones.  You will plant the seeds in the egg cartons and then once they sprout and are ready to plant outside, you will cut and plant each section of the egg carton directly in the ground.  No mess, no, fuss!   

How To Grow Seeds Indoors

With my method, you will use egg cartons to plant seeds and then cover with saran wrap to create a mini green house effect. Then you will leave seeds in a sunny spot to grow. 

The egg cartons are self-watering because you will place them on a tray, and rather than water the carton, you will water the tray.  The egg cartons will absorb the water from the bottom and water the seeds.  It’s really neat!

Directions To Plant Your Own Seeds:

1. Gather your supplies, your kids, and head outside. 
2. Fill each egg carton with enough potting soil to fill each egg section. 
3. Using an end of a spoon or your finger, make a small hole in the soil for the flower seed. A child’s finger is the perfect size too if they don’t mind the dirt.
4. Cut open a see packet and place one seed in each section of the egg carton.  This is an excellent step for your kids to do.  Keep in mind that some seeds are really small – so they might be hard for your kids to do, but some seeds are big and work perfect for small fingers.
5. Cover the hole by filling in with soil.  Again, another great step for small fingers to do.
6. Pat down the dirt to make sure it’s packed well.
7. Set the egg carton aside once all the seeds are planted. 
8. Repeat with each egg carton you have.
9. After all the seeds have been planted, cover each carton with saran wrap. 
10. Make sure to label each egg carton.  We used sticky notes and taped them to the top of the saran wrap. My daughter enjoyed making the labels by coloring a picture of the flower on them.  This is a great step for kids to get involved in.
11. Carry all your planted seeds inside and place them on trays in a sunny spot.
12. Water the trays and watch the egg cartons soak up the water to water the seeds.
13. Water every few days as needed.  Another great job for your kids to do.
14. Watch your seeds grow!
15. Once they are ready, transfer and plant outdoors!  Make sure the threat of frost is past.

Planting Tips

I didn’t have enough trays or metal pans to fit all the seeds we wanted to plant.  So we used plastic storage bin lids to put our seeds on. Each lid has a little dip in the center that ended up being perfect to hold water on. 

Just use what you can find around your house.  A pan or some type of tray will work great!  Just make sure it’s not too tall where the sides block the sun.  

If you don’t have sticky notes, you can use popsicle sticks to label your seeds.  We didn’t have any popsicle sticks, so we had to get creative with our sticky notes!

Make your own mini greenhouse with egg cartons and saran wrap! Share on X

That’s it!  Fun huh?!  Frugal too!  My only expense was buying the seeds, but seed packets were only about $1.69 each and each packet has a lot of seeds!

Other Fun and Frugal Activities To Do With Your Kids

• How To Make A Sidewalk Chalk Mosaic
• How To Make Homemade Chalk
• Cookie Cutter Bird Feeders – Easy Craft For Kids
• Kids Outdoor Tic Tac Toe You Can Make 3 Easy Ways

Want to remember this post?  Pin this post, Grow Seeds Indoors with Kids – Save on Flowers, to your favorite Pinterest board right now!