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Thursday, July 15, 2010

How to Grow Wheat Grass

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A few weeks ago, I grew some wheat grass to use as centerpieces for a little church activity I helped plan. It was so fun, and so easy, and so inexpensive. And the result was awesome! I didn’t get a whole lot of pictures of each phase, but wanted to share this little tutorial in case any of you want to try it. I just used it for display purposes, but if you wanted to be really healthy, you could also juice the grass and drink it!

Supplies:

Wheat grass berries (basically wheat that hasn’t been ground up yet.)

Soil

A big bowl

A spray bottle/with water

A pot

I needed eight centerpieces, so I went to Home Depot and got some small terra cotta pots (the ones you usually see sitting on a saucer.) They were about $1.50 each. Brought them home and gave them a good coat of spray paint – lime green and orange to go with our decorating theme of bright colors. (See photo above.)

Soak the wheat grass berries. For eight pots, I put about 2 cups of berries in a bowl of water (completely cover them). I had a lot of extra. Soak the berries for about a day.

It’s time to plant! Fill your pot(s)about 3/4 full of soil. Then, spread a single layer of wheat berries over the top of the soil. Cover them with a thin layer of soil. TIPS: For thick wheat grass, make you you have a solid layer of wheat berries, but try to not overlap them. Using your spray bottle, water your little pots of grass!

Wheat grass is typically grown inside, so after the planting process, I carried all my pots inside and placed them in a sunny space near a window. Because I didn’t purchase the little saucers that go with my pots, I put magazines under them.

Cover your pot(s) with newspaper for a day or two until the berries start sprouting. Water them with your spray bottle twice a day.

Once your grass has sprouted, remove the newspaper and continue watering once or twice a day with the spray bottle. Within a week of planting, you will have something that looks like this:

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Once wheat grass starts growing, it shoots up fast! When my grass was about this tall, I started watering it with a watering can because I am lazy and the spray bottle seemed to take FOREVER.

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I grew my grass for about two weeks and it ended up being twice as tall as the grass in the photo above. For the centerpieces, we tied a bright pink ribbon around each pot, and using a skewer, we stuck a quote relating to our activity in each pot. One of the girls found some cute butterflies at Hobby Lobby meant to be stuck in gardens or plants, and we put one of those in each pot as well. They looked so good, and everyone was amazed that the grass was real!

This is a really fun activity to do with your kids at Easter. Real Easter grass!

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