{"id":709,"date":"2018-05-10T11:05:53","date_gmt":"2018-05-10T11:05:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.sibo.co.za\/?p=709"},"modified":"2020-03-20T12:31:22","modified_gmt":"2020-03-20T12:31:22","slug":"growing-things","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.sibo.co.za\/index.php\/2018\/05\/10\/growing-things\/","title":{"rendered":"Growing things"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/blog.sibo.co.za\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/Sibo-and-the-Veggie-Bed.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-663 aligncenter\" src=\"http:\/\/blog.sibo.co.za\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/Sibo-and-the-Veggie-Bed-235x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"235\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blog.sibo.co.za\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/Sibo-and-the-Veggie-Bed-235x300.jpg 235w, https:\/\/blog.sibo.co.za\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/Sibo-and-the-Veggie-Bed.jpg 601w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 235px) 85vw, 235px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Last time we talked about sniffing and growing <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.sibo.co.za\/index.php\/2018\/05\/10\/sniffing-stuff\/\">Rosemary<\/a>. At the moment, a <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.sibo.co.za\/index.php\/2018\/04\/26\/good-green-fun-from-checkers\/\">certain supermarket<\/a> is onto a really cool thing \u2013 giving out little pots of flowers or veggies with every purchase over R150. I know many kids are hounding their parents to go shopping there to increase their collection, but fear not if you don\u2019t get it right.<\/p>\n<p>You can easily grow your own veggies without any fancy little pots.<\/p>\n<p>All you need are egg boxes, seeds and soil (seedling soil really works the best \u2013 but it&#8217;s not completely necessary).<\/p>\n<p>Get a group of kids together and share resources. One bag of seedling soil goes a really long way. If you don\u2019t have any money for seeds, ask friends who have gardens if they have any to spare. Marigolds grow very quickly from the seeds that you can harvest from a dead flower. So do lots of other things \u2013 like tomatoes.<\/p>\n<p>Simply fill the egg boxes with soil \u2013 poke a little hole in the middle \u2013 about 1cm deep and plant a seed (or two). Cover the hole up with a bit of soil. Water gently and put them on a windowsill or somewhere light. They don\u2019t like direct sunlight too much because then they dry out.<\/p>\n<p>Make sure that you keep them moist &#8211; if the soil gets dry your teensy babies will never sprout.<\/p>\n<p>The time it takes to sprout depends on what seeds you have planted. Some spout much quicker than others &#8211; for instance, Sweet Alyssum starts sprouting in about 3 days but onions take around 10 \u2013 15 days to poke their little green shoots out into the world.<\/p>\n<p>Once they do start sprouting, plant the whole egg box in the ground. Or you can carefully cut the little sections apart and scatter them around your garden or into pots. The egg box material is biodegradable. Just (obviously) make sure you do not use plastic egg boxes!<\/p>\n<p>You can even have fun making your own artistic signs out of ice-cream sticks or bits of cardboard box so that you know which seeds are which.<\/p>\n<p>Consider having a race with your friends and see whose seeds sprout first.<\/p>\n<p>By the way \u2013 if you want to know how to make a veggie bed the size of a door \u2013 my book \u2013 Sibo and the Veggie Bed (check out the cover above) is available this month as a free read on the <a href=\"https:\/\/sibo.co.za\">website<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Explore your green-fingered side guys!<\/p>\n<p>Have fun.<\/p>\n<p>Sibo<\/p>\n<p>Xx<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Last time we talked about sniffing and growing Rosemary. At the moment, a certain supermarket is onto a really cool thing \u2013 giving out little pots of flowers or veggies with every purchase over R150. I know many kids are hounding their parents to go shopping there to increase their collection, but fear not if &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blog.sibo.co.za\/index.php\/2018\/05\/10\/growing-things\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Growing things&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[79,34,14],"tags":[76,162,77,85,161,20,163],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.sibo.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/709"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.sibo.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.sibo.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.sibo.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.sibo.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=709"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blog.sibo.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/709\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":746,"href":"https:\/\/blog.sibo.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/709\/revisions\/746"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.sibo.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=709"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.sibo.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=709"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.sibo.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=709"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}