Growing Apple Seeds

Back in December, we picked up a package of organic apples. On a whim, we saved some of the seeds. We wanted to experiment and see if we could get them to germinate over the winter. We cleaned the seeds and let them dry overnight, then we took a couple napkins and let them soak in water. We put the seeds in between two layers of napkins and them put them inside a ziploc and sealed it. Then we put it in the fridge and forgot about it. Three days ago we pulled them out and the kids were amazed to see that the seeds had sprouted! 

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I carefully peeled the napkins away from the seeds. Usually you would take them out of the fridge as soon as they started to sprout, but it's fine that they were in there an extra month.. or two. I read somewhere that only 30% of seeds germinate. I think we got lucky, because all but three of the seeds germinated! (You can see them on the left near the bottom.)

Originally I was going to use a longer container, but then I realized it might be too shallow for some of the roots. So instead I used this deeper container and regular organic potting soil (no fertilizer needed). Once they begin to outgrow this container we will put them in individual pots. It's just to hold them over for a couple months until they are strong enough to survive outside. At which point, we will probably plant them in our kiddie pool garden, which survived the winter, but needs some new life!

Bean loved planting the sprouts and was so careful with them! She also compared them to her Safari Ltd Life Cycle of a Green Bean Plant figures, which look similar enough. I think it would be really cool if Safari Ltd expanded their Life Cycle series and made a tree and flower set. Tomorrow we will be drawing the sprouts in our nature journal and begin working on our Forest for the Trees workbook (look out for our TOS Crew review in a few weeks). We are very excited to learn about how trees grow!

Our sprouts are so cute and we really hope we are able to watch them all grow up! We will be bringing them outside with us on really sunny days, but otherwise they will sit in our sunniest window, where they can be easily observed.

We still have a lot to learn about raising apple trees, but we are excited about this living project and can't wait to share our experiences with you!