When visiting the gardening megastore last week, I saw some small kits in the shape of greenhouses which allow you to grow herbs and other green-fingers-stuff at home in tiny little greenhouses. Now, I have lived my adult life in large cities, no garden, sometimes a balcony, in other words: I do not have green fingers (yet). However, I wanted to give this a try, because it looks like lots of fun. And with this credit-crunch present all around us, self-sustainability and growing your own healthy stuffs is going to be all the rage!
I got myself a few different kits to see how good they are (or probably, how good I am). I bought one with sunflowers, one with lavender and one kit with six different herbs; Parsley, Chives, Marjoran, Thym, Celery and Basil. They cost between 2,5 and 4 euro per kit. Besides these little greenhouses, I also bought a little bonsai tree kit.
The kits come in little plastic greenhouses:
When opening the kit, you will find six small pots, a description and a bag containing the earth. In this kit the pots were clay, which gives it a solid feel. The sunflower kit as well as the lavender kit contained plastic pots, which was a bit of a disappointment. Clay seems so much more cute.
The whole thing is pretty easy to put together. Put the earth in the pots, put the seeds in the earth, make sure the earth is moist and compact it a little bit, and put the pots back in the little greenhouse.
A tip for those that do not have green fingers normally (much like me): When you start a kit with six different herbs, you probably won’t know what herb is in which pot once you put it all together, so mark the pots 
Once all is in the greenhouse, you just put it in a spot with natural light in your house and keep it at room temperature (around 20 degrees Celsius). Make sure you keep the soil moist, but do not drown the seeds.
Depending on the kit you bought, the instructions may be a bit different. These herbs are to be in a light spot. So do the sunflowers. But a little bonsai kit I bought (more on that in later posts), needs the shade.
In a bout 4 to 10 weeks, these should germinate and start showing us some life. When they have grown to be about 3 to 4 cm, they have to be put in separate, larger pots of about 10 cm diameter. The sunflowers I plan to put in one big pot, and probably the lavender too.
Once the sunflowers start growing, it will be important to turn around the greenhouse every day, to prevent the flowers from growing to the light on one side only.
First impressions are: fun! This is simple fun and feels a bit like having a pet. You will need to take good care of these in order for it to grow. However, the plastic greenhouses are flimsy and do not work very well. I am probably going to look for something nicer to grow them in.
But for now let’s see how this goes. I plan to show you photo’s here of the progress on a regular basis, but it will be a few weeks before anything will start to show.
Light:
Moisture:
