Healthy Seed Starters
Projects & Crafts
Contributed by Julie Unger Zorn, tucsonsongstress.com, Judaic Culture Specialist at the Tucson JCC, http://www.tucsonjcc.org/
This project combines the celebration of the holiday Tu B'shvat with the value Sh'mirat HaGuf! Create this project so they can create and share healthy vegetables with their families.
Materials
Newspaper (1 sheet needed per seed starter)
Warm Water
1 bucket
1 colander
Seeds
Procedure:
1) Take 1 sheet of newspaper and rip it into small shreds.
2) Cover the ripped newspaper shreds with warm water and tear the pieces into even smaller pieces as they become a thoroughly soaked pulp. You might want to wear dish gloves at this point, as the newspaper ink will stain your fingers a bit.
3) Strain the pulp in a colander and squeeze out as much water as you can.
4) Once the pulp has been strained and squeezed, push the pulp into shape with a cookie cutter. I used a cowboy boot. Place the cookie cutter on a piece of cardboard. The cardboard will absorb water allowing your seed starter to dry faster.
5) Gently remove the cookie cutter and choose some seeds to push into the wet shape. Here are the varieties we used in the contributor's project at the TJCC preschool.
This example used cucumber seeds for with a cowboy boot cookie cutter. Cucumber seeds are a bit large for this project, it might be necessary to push each one in place so it will stick when the seed starter dries. Here is the final product.
It takes about 3 days for the seed starter to dry. Once is is completely dry, go ahead and plant it. Most vegetable seeds require direct sunlight and can be started off in a pot.