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How to Sprout Seeds on a Sponge Garden

By Brenda P in Activities for Kids

gardening spring STEM activityThis post contains affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.

Garden before it's warm outside with this adorable cabin-shaped sponge garden! It's the perfect way to learn about seed germination with kids! this idea now...

This time of year, the weather may be safe to plant seeds outside, but it may not be quite yet. My kids and I decided to experiment with sprouting seeds on a sponge garden.

These little gardens are the perfect way to spout seeds and get them started before it’s warm enough to garden outdoors. After sprouting our seeds, we moved them into little pots to continue to grow until temperatures outside heat up. 

Garden before it's warm outside with this adorable cabin-shaped sponge garden! It's the perfect way to learn about seed germination with kids!

What you’ll need to make a sponge garden:

  • Sponges
  • Fast-growing seeds (like chia seeds, grass seeds, or broccoli seeds)
  • Plate
  • Scissors

Garden before it's warm outside with this adorable cabin-shaped sponge garden! It's the perfect way to learn about germination with kids!

We ended up using broccoli seeds for our sponge garden, which did take a little bit longer to grow than some other kinds of seeds. Chia seeds, I think would be ideal, but we could not find them anywhere locally, and the purchase price online was surprisingly expensive. I think we were looking for seeds just a bit too early!

The first step is to build your sponge garden. Building the sponge house is fun all by itself! You can let your little builders get creative with this or follow our directions here.

We decided to transform our sponge garden into a log cabin. 

I cut the sponges into strips longways. We used about 2 sponges for the base, then one whole sponge for our cabin’s roof. 

Garden before it's warm outside with this adorable cabin-shaped sponge garden! It's the perfect way to learn about germination with kids!

Soak the sponges in water, and then squeeze out about half the liquid. 

Leave a little more liquid in the sponges than you would if you were using them to clean because we found that if our sponges were too dry, the seeds stopped germinating. 

Stack the sponge strips into a log cabin shape and top with the whole sponge. 

Sprinkle the seeds on top. 

Garden before it's warm outside with this adorable cabin-shaped sponge garden! It's the perfect way to learn about germination with kids!

snowflake graphic with free printable ispy game printed page

We found that placing the seeds in the hole of the sponge helped keep them in place when the sponge needed watering. 

We keep the sponge watered by removing it from the top of the house and watering beneath the sponge. This prevented the seeds from rolling away before they took sprout. 

Garden before it's warm outside with this adorable cabin-shaped sponge garden! It's the perfect way to learn about germination with kids!

Put your seed cabin in a sunny spot, but make sure to keep it watered!

Garden before it's warm outside with this adorable cabin-shaped sponge garden! It's the perfect way to learn about germination with kids!

After about 3 days, you should start to see seeds. In about 10 days, your seeds will be fully sprout-sized and you can then move them to a container with soil. Or you can eat them with a salad! (It’s a great way to encourage kids to eat more greens!)

And that’s how you sprout seeds on a sponge garden!

Garden before it's warm outside with this adorable cabin-shaped sponge garden! It's the perfect way to learn about seed germination with kids!

Dear mom, I have so much more I’d love to share with you…

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    Filed Under: Activities for Kids, Seasonal, Spring Tagged With: gardening, spring, STEM activityPublished on April 18, 2017

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