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Growing Kids
This section is especially for kids who
like to grow and make things.
We will have things children can make for the garden and things to make from
the garden. New things are added each month so make sure you check us out each
month.
Plants rule, OK?
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Grow Things 2 |
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Taking Hardwood Cuttings | |
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Carnivorous Plants |
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A Bulb in a Bottle | |
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Beginners' Bonsai | |
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Growing Sunflowers | |
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Bean Race | |
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Team Colour Pots | |
You will need: A pair of sharp secateurs (be careful!); small 7cm plastic pots; propagating mix (see below); a pencil; deciduous plants to take cuttings from.
What to Do:
1. Fill
the plastic pot/s with propagating mix. You can buy this at a nursery or make
your own by mixing 2 parts of coarse river sand with 1 part of peat moss. Make
sure the mix is thoroughly damp.
2. Take cuttings from trees and bushes. You could try wisteria, viburnum, crepe myrtle, hydrangea, weigela, deciduous hibiscus, poplar or willow.
3. Choose lower branches because they often form roots more easily. Choose a piece of brown stem that is about as wide and long as a pencil. Each cutting needs to have at least 4 nodes. See left.
4. Make a straight cut across the stem just below a node with the secateurs. Count 4 to 6 nodes and then make a slanting cut across the top, just above a node. This is so that you won't plant the cutting upside down.The straight end always goes in the soil and the pointy end is at the top. If you plant the cutting upside-down it will die.
5. Collect all your cuttings before beginning to plant.
6. Make a hole in the mix in the pot with the pencil. It should be about 1/3 the length of the cutting deep.
7. Place the straight end of the cutting in the hole and firm the mix around it gently. (Many gardeners dip the end of the cutting in water, then in rooting powder before planting.) Repeat this for all the cuttings. You can put lots in the one large pot if you like, but they transplant much better if they have their own little pots.
8. Water well.
9. Keep your cuttings in the shade. Don't let them dry out.
10. In early spring, you will see some of the nodes beginning to shoot. Don't expect all your cuttings to 'strike' - plant a few of each type, so that you have a good chance of getting one that works out.
11. Transplant your new little plants into some good potting mix in a 12cm pot, and remember to water well and often. After a few weeks your plant will need some fertiliser. It will be growing well by autumn and you can then transplant it into the garden or into a larger pot.
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1.Carnivorous
plants are really neat and you can keep them indoors on a brightly-lit window
ledge. 'Carnivorous' means 'meat-eating' and these plants actually eat insects!
2. Most large nurseries and some smaller
ones carry a range of carnivorous plants. If you can't find any, ask your local
nursery-person for help. They can probably get some in for you. 
There
are many kinds including Pitcher Plants and Sundews, but Venus Fly Traps are the
most fun. In some nurseries they are called 'Fang' which is a great name, but
you might like to call yours something different - maybe 'Terminator' (but look
after it well - it would be a bit sad if it ended up as 'ex-Terminator' wouldn't
it?)
3. Keep your plant in a pot with a deep
saucer and never let it dry out. These plants live in bogs so they need
to be wet all the time. They like to get some sun though and this makes the
leaves go an interesting reddish colour.
4. Your plant will live longer if you only water it with rain water. Put out a plastic bowl next time it rains and keep the water in a bottle. If you run out of rainwater, tap water will do.
5. Your plant catches insects by enticing them into its trap with a sweet sticky solution. Once inside, they trigger the trap my touching some fine hairs and the 'jaws' of the plant snap shut over the insect. The plant then dissolves the soft parts of the insect and absorbs them. Then the 'jaws' open up again. If you trigger the plant too often by moving a straw or something inside the 'jaws', you will shorten its life. Closing the trap uses up a lot of the plant's energy. Each set of 'jaws' can only be triggered a few times before that stem dies.
6. To attract insects around your plant you can put a piece of overripe fruit beside it. Don't worry if your plant doesn't catch any insects - it won't die of starvation. The insects are just an extra source of food and not essential.
7. Your fly-trap may flower. The flowers are not very interesting so after you've seen what one looks like it is probably a good idea to cut any others off.
BRAIN TEASER
Can you break the code and read this message from Fang, the Venus Fly Trap?
'J mpwf gmjft'
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Have you ever planted bulbs such as daffodils and tulips in the garden or in a
pot? It is fun to do but there are also some bulbs you can grow indoors in a
vase. You can only do it for one season - after that the bulb must be planted in
the ground again to build up its food supplies -but it's fun to be able to watch
its progress so closely.
What you will need: A small glass fruit juice or iced tea bottle, a hyacinth bulb, a paper bag
What to do:
1. Fill the bottle with water and sit the bulb on top. The water should be about 3mm from the bottom of the bulb. (The top of the bulb is the pointy end.)
2. You will have to keep the water at the same level as the bulb grows. This is a bit tricky because you can't take the bulb off because you will damage the roots. You will have to gently move the bulb to the side a bit and pour the water in with a jug. (The plastic jugs that are used to fill steam irons are perfect.)
3. Cover the bottle with a paper bag, leaving enough room at the top for a shoot to grow and put it in a cool dark cupboard.
4. When the shoot is about 5cm long, take the paper bag off and leave it in the cupboard for one more day. For the next two days leave the bottle in a place that has some light but not too much. Next, move it to a brighter position for another couple of days. Then you need to find a spot on a sunny windowsill where the bottle can stay until the plant flowers.
5. After flowering, the bulb can be planted in a pot or in the garden. It may flower again the season after next or produce some bulbils (baby bulbs).
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Bonsai means "plant in a shallow container" and in countries like Japan and China gardeners have been growing these miniature trees for more than a thousand years. You can try it too.
You
Will Need: a shallow pot (you
might be able to ask an adult to cut down a plastic pot for you to experiment
with), potting mix, peat moss, a couple of stones, secateurs and copper wire
(later).
1. Put enough potting mix and peat moss to fill the pot into a plastic bag. (Add a teaspoon of blood and bone if you have some.) Put some water in the bag and shake it all up until all the material is really wet. Then fill the pot with the mixture.
2. You can plant an acorn in the pot and wait for it to sprout or find one that has already sprouted and transplant it. (You can use many little seedling trees from around your garden. Japanese Maple, Cotoneaster, Poinciana, Holly and Jacaranda are all suitable, but there are many others.)
3. If you are using a seedling, trim back any long roots and plant the seedling in the pot.
4. Half bury a couple of nice stones in the potting mix so that it looks like a real landscape. (The stones might help keep the plant where you want it too.)
5. If you have any moss, lichen or Baby's Tears in your garden you can add that to the top of the soil.
6. Find a sheltered spot for the pot in the garden or on the deck where it gets some morning sunshine.
7. You must water the Bonsai EVERY day unless it is raining.
8. When the plant grows, you can carefully prune it to the shape you want and tie the branches to the trunk with copper wire to make them grow in the right direction if necessary.
Brain Teaser: Can you unscramble this Japanese saying?
"step one a Even with journey mile begins thousand" (Hint - start with the capital letter.)
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There
are lots of myths and legends about people trying to capture the sun, but there
is a way you can do it ... well, sort of. Sunflowers are wonderful plants with
huge yellow flowers just like the sun, and when you pick them and bring them
inside it's just like having your own bright sun indoors. The best thing
is that they grow really fast!
You will need: A packet of sunflower seeds, a sunny spot in the garden where there is plenty of room (if you don't have room in the garden there are special ones to grow in a pot - see below), some compost or manure.
What to do:
1. Dig up the area where you are going to plant your seeds. Dig in some compost or manure.
2. Make several low mounds about half a metre apart with a saucer shape in the top. This will help you to know where your seeds are planted.
3. Plant about 5 seeds in each saucer. Plant the seeds about half a centimetre deep.
4. Water them gently. Keep the saucer moist until the seedlings emerge.
5. When the seedlings have a couple of leaves, pull out the weakest ones and leave the two best ones to grow.
6. Some sunflower plants can grow 3 metres tall! Others are not quite so big.
7.
If you can only grow your sunflowers in a pot, there is a cute variety called Teddy
Bear which has lovely fuzzy flowers and only grows 40cm tall. Do you know
this funny old rhyme?
Fuzzy-wuzzy was
a bear,
Fuzzy-wuzzy had no hair,
So Fuzzy-wuzzy wasn't fuzzy, wuz he?
8. By the way, sunflower seeds are yummy to eat, but they are much easier to husk if you are a parrot!
You know the story of Jack and the Beanstalk?
Well, bean plants really do grow very fast. You can have some fun running a
competition to see whose bean plant can be the first to reach the top of a
stake. If you don't have anyone to compete with, you could treat each plant in a
different way (eg lots of water, different fertiliser, mulch or no mulch) to see
what works the best. This is basically the way that horticulturists do plant
research. But a race is lots of fun - nearly as good as the Melbourne Cup but it
lasts a lot longer!
What you will need: Tall bamboo garden stakes (at least 2m tall); climbing bean seeds.
What to do:
1. Dig up the area where the beans are to be grown.2. Hammer in the stakes 30 cm apart. Make sure that they are all the same height.
3. Water the area with a garden sprinkler until the soil is deeply moist.
4. Plant two bean seeds close to each stake. It is a good idea to plant one either side of the stake, just in case one does not germinate or gets eaten off. Each competitor can then choose which of the two plants will be allowed to race to the top of the stake. (The other plant should be pulled out.)
5. Do not water after you plant the seeds because watering bean seeds can stop them from germinating properly. Try not to water until you see the bean shoots breaking through the soil. (If it's really hot and dry though, you will need to water just enough to keep the soil damp.)
6. The rules of the competition are that you cannot tie your bean plant to the stake but you can try to wind it around the stake if it makes off in a different direction.
7. Each competitor is responsible for watering his or her own plant. (HINT: Plant roots spread sideways a lot further than you think!)
8. Once the competition is over, you can attach some lattice or mesh to the stakes and harvest and share the beans.
Bean there done that!
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Do you have a favourite sporting team? Do you like to wear the team colours to show your support? Some people have even gone as far as painting their house in the colours of their favourite footy team! That’s taking it a bit far, but how would you like to grow some colour pots for the front porch that look pretty as well as showing your support for the Very Best Team! It’s easy.
You will need: 2 wide pots, potting mix, 2 punnets of seedlings, slow-release fertiliser.
What to Do:
1. The best pots to choose are wide, low, bowl-shaped plastic pots. They are not too heavy to lift when they are full of potting mix, they look good, don’t break and are not too expensive.
2. Get the best potting mix you can afford. Look for a sign on the pack that says Australian Standard and has a line of ticks.
3. The best seedlings to choose are violas and pansies because they come in many plain colours. You can get blue, white, red, orange, yellow, purple and black. If your team has green as one of their colours, you can use parsley or chives instead of flowers. There are some tricky colours such as brown. (For a Hawthorn pot for example, you could choose tan-coloured wallflowers teamed with yellow calendulas.) Calendulas come in yellow, orange or gold. You can also use white or carmine (purplish pink) primulas; white, purple or apricot alyssum and some of the plain coloured primroses or polyanthus. If you can’t see the colour you want, ask your nurseryperson. They might be able to get them for you.
4. Fill the pots to three-quarters full with potting mix. Water the seedlings then carefully up-end them over your hand so they come out of the punnet. Using an old bread and butter knife, carefully separate the seedlings keeping as much soil around the roots as possible. Put three or four plants of one colour in the middle and put the second colour right around the edge of the pot. Mix the fertiliser with enough potting mix to fill the pots. Fill in the spaces around the plants with potting mix making sure there are no air pockets. Water the pots gently but well.
5. Put the pots in a sunny spot and keep them well-watered. When they begin to flower you can move them to a bright spot at the front for everyone to see! If your team doesn't win this time, at least you have some pretty pots to cheer you up.
Copyright Global Garden 2007 http://www.global-garden.com.au
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