wheat grass

Garrett has always loved the great outdoors, but lately he's taken a keener interest in "growing things." This might have something to do with the corn his class is attempting to grow in paper cups at school. Or maybe it's because there's been a lot of emphasis at our house about how beautiful and fragrant (and needed) springtime is. Whatever the reason, he's a big fan, so I thought it might be fun to let him and Caleb help me grow wheat grass.

Wheat grass grows incredibly quickly and, unless you never water it, is pretty easy to maintain. Translation = VERY REWARDING. Especially when you're ages 4 and 2. (Okay, and also when you're 30.)

I mean, check it out --

Wheat grass, day 1

Wheat grass, day 5

Just a few more days, and we'll be able to give our grass a haircut!

If you want to try this at your home, here's what we did:

We used hard red winter wheat (also called wheatberry), which, from what I read online, is the best for growing indoor wheat grass. It can be purchased just about anywhere you can buy whole grains. We found ours in bulk at Whole Foods. (And, since $1.30 buys a ton, we have a lot extra, so if you're local and interested in doing this, too, talk to me; I'd be happy to pass some of our surplus wheat berries onto you.)

The night before planting, soak the wheat in a bowl of water. Now is also a good time to prepare your planter simply by filling it with potting soil. Technically you should make sure that your pot has good drainage, but apparently Dixie cups with no drainage holes whatsoever will still sprout wheat grass. (To provide drainage in a Dixie cup, put a layer of pebbles on the bottom.)

In the morning, drain the water from the now plumped wheat seeds. Water (but don't soak) the potting soil in the planter and sprinkle seeds over the top of the dirt.

Water carefully and frequently (we've been using a spray bottle about 3 times a day). Sprouts will appear in a day or two, and pretty soon after that those sprouts will look like grass. Keep watering, and the grass will keep growing.

Some instructions encourage you to keep the grass covered (with a piece of cardboard, sheets of newspaper, cheese cloth, or plastic wrap) in the sprouting stage, but if you do this, you have to be careful of sprouting mold in addition to grass, which will ruin your seeds. It's a fine line at that point between keeping your seeds damp and over-watering them. We didn't cover ours at all, and while more of our seeds probably would have sprouted if we did, we still got a pretty decent showing of grass. Next time, though, I think I'll try covering them.

To slightly extend the life of your grass, give it an occasional trim. I'm told that after about 10 days or so, the grass is beyond saving by water and trims. At this point you can re-pot your soil and do it all again!