Planting Cucumber and Cilantro Seeds

I'm sorry to keep you all waiting.  I was hoping to get this blog entry out yesterday.  Unfortunately, time ran out.  We did get to plant some seeds by 11 p.m. last night because I want to eat healthy.  To accomplish planting cucumber and cilantro seeds, we followed various steps which I will recount through pictures. 

We set a few newspapers on the dining table.  This was to keep the table clean.  Newspapers help the cleanup. 

We used the pellets from this package.  These pellets are made of fragile screen sacs full of soil.  If you add water, these pellets expand.  These are the remainder from last year.

The back of the box has easy instructions to follow to use the pellets. 

Here is an individual pellet (above), as I call it.

Here is an empty cup.  It used to hold applesauce.  We used this cup and a few other ones last year.

Here's what the cup probably held--granny smith applesauce.  It's  wonderful to know that you can eat a healthy snack and then use the cup for something else.

Here are a few pellets that went in cups.  Sorry about the background.  I keep those papers from ads that come in the mail.  I reuse them to place raw meat on.  This time, we used a few of those papers to collect any of the mess from planting.

We filled a watering can with water.  Isn't the elephant cute?

We poured water on the pellets.  I added a little bit more water to help some of the pellets expand.

We waited a few minutes.  You can see that all of the pellets became swollen.

Here is a close up of the difference between a swollen and a non-swollen pellet.  Soil was compressed before and then the ones we decided to use became bigger.  I have a few more pellets left for another round of planting in the future.

This packet has big seeds.

These are cucumber seeds.  We placed two seeds in each pellet of soil.

This packet has round seeds.

These are cilantro seeds.

I used two of those white plastic strips to label the seeds.  I cut the strips and labeled the pieces. 

I labeled one as cilantro and six for cucumber seeds.

We placed the labels inside the cups.

Finally, we placed the cups on the windowsill.  I hope the seeds grow into the baby plants of cucumber and cilantro.  I pray they will get enough sun.  They will be close enough for me to water them since they are in the kitchen.  Last year, we used lamps as artificial light to turn seeds into baby plants in our former classroom.

Well, I hope you enjoyed this many-pictured blog entry.  Thanks for your patience in viewing Saturday's late entry.

What about you, my readers?  Are any of you all planting anything this spring?  I hope you will consider doing it at least as an experiment for the children in your life.

I pray God's grants you all His wisdom and peace.

This has been part of Saturday Spreads series.