Reel Gardening and Herbs in a can

With my interest in vegetable gardening, my family gave me some interesting and inovative Christmas gifts this year.

Greg and Sharon gave me three novelty cooldrink sized cans - 'Herbs in a tin" - Basil, Thyme and Oregano (supplied by Fuzhou Premiere Crafts.)  Each can has to be opened at the bottom and the plastic cap replaced, then the lid is peeled off the top to reveal a potting medium which has to be kept moist.  They also come with a tiny packet containing a few replacement seeds. Besides herbs they also sell 'Tin-can Flowers' and one website showed Pointsettia, Cosmos, Lavender and small Chrysanthemum daisies in cans.  I've placed the tins on my kitchen windowsill and it'll be interesting to see how long the seeds take to germinate and how large the plants can grow in a cool-drink sized can.

The other gift was from Jeff and Gail, my brother and his wife. This is a spring/summer planting pack of 5 vegetable seeds on 1m long reel of paper. Now planting seeds in strips of paper is not new and you can read about many different projects glueing seeds to strips of toilet paper, or growing sprouts in tissue paper.  The 'Reel Gardening' process is a more advanced version of this type of germination of seeds in paper. 

Reel Gardening was an award winning science project of Claire Reid, a 16 year-old girl from South Africa.  It involves a pre-fertilised seed strip that encases seeds in biodegradable paper.  The strips indicate the correct depth that the seeds should be buried with a coloured line at the top and the seeds are placed at the correct distance apart from one another inside the strips. Each strip is colour coded e.g. Tomato is red, Beetroot is purple etc.  The paper strip is 3.5cm wide and is purchased in metre strips.  Each package has a specific amount of metres.  Instructions are printed on each strip in English, Afrikaans, Zulu, Sesotho, Sepedi, Setswana and Xhosa.

 Visual instructions are also printed. The strips are very easy to understand and can even be planted by children.
Her invention was entered into the Eskom Young Scientists expo which won a gold medal at the national finals. The Department of Water Affairs and Forestry nominated Claire’s invention for the South African Junior Water Prize as it reduces water wastage by 80% and Claire won. Claire then represented South Africa  at the 2003 Stockholm Junior Water Prize where Reel Gardening came first out of 24 countries.

My pack contains Carrot, Tomato, Beans, Sweet Corn and Beetroot seed strips. The package shows a 2m X 1m area for planting but I decided to use up the remaining Mel's Mix in plant troughs and have planted the strips in those.  They are the same depth as the box garden so the carrots (up to 20cm long) and beetroot should have enough space to grow.  On the ReelGardening website they say that the Sweet Corn will reach maturity in 80 days but there are no eta dates for the other vegetables.  We'll just have to wait and see.