DIY Eco seed crackers

If you love Christmas, gardening, upcycling, and keeping the kids busy – you’ll be popping over this project! December is about abundance, but sadly a lot of this is waste too. So, dear gardeners, let’s play our part in reducing, recycling, and remembering that we can incorporate a little green in everything. Instead of the usual cracker filled with plastic nonsense, which ends up in the bin, imagine an upcycled cracker filled with veggie, herb, and flower seeds to plant for summer! Hooray! Get the kids on board and let’s make eco seed crackers for Christmas.

Get cracking

For this DIY project, you will need:

• Some empty toilet rolls
• A few pieces of tissue paper
• Used ecp wrapping paper
• Twine/string/ribbon/elastic bands
• A pair of scissors
• Light duty glue
• Colouring in goodies
• Seeds to plant

After the cracker has been cracked, you will need:

• Soil and compost
• Some sweet sunshine and water

Selecting seeds

Give your guests something meaningful to take home after Christmas lunch with a stunning selection of summer seeds for you to choose from:

• Full sun, summer veggies: Broccoli, brussels sprouts, capsicum, cucumber, brinjal, sweet melon (spanspek), pumpkin (flat boer), spinach, tomatoes, and watermelon.
• Full sun, summer herbs: Catnip, chamomile, chives, coriander, dill, fennel, garlic, paprika, rocket, and sage.
• Full sun, summer flowers: Alyssum, black-eyed Susan, chrysanthemum, cosmos, forget-me-not, helichrysum, marigold, nasturtium, petunias, and sunflowers.

Elves at work

Green fingers at the ready! It’s time to assemble our crackers:

1. Wrap your selected seeds inside a few pieces of toilet paper or tissue. Tie them up with a piece of string. Set aside.
2. For a personal touch and the enjoyable element of surprise, decorate the toilet roll according to what seed is inside. Kids can draw on veggies, herbs, or flowers and decorate as desired. This also adds to the excitement as guests won’t know what seeds they got until the cracker has popped and they behold your child’s delightful loo roll artwork.
3. Cut your leftover wrapping paper so that the length is double that of the toilet roll.
4. Cover the toilet roll with your wrapping paper, making a sort of tunnel. Secure the wrapping onto the body of the toilet roll with a little glue.
5. Place your seed bundle inside the decorated toilet roll.
6. There should be enough wrapping paper left on both sides of the toilet roll for you to twist on each end, forming the shape of a traditional cracker.
7. Twist the ends of the overlapping wrapping paper against the ends of the toilet roll and secure with string around the twisted parts.
8. Once you have cracked the cracker, guests can then reveal their seed surprises and compliment your child’s fantastic decorating skills! This will make kids feel proud and recognised as important contributors to Christmas lunch, while also getting everyone engaged in a meaningful gardening conversation! Another win for Mother Nature!
9. Our green Christmas doesn’t stop there. You can also use the toilet paper roll as your seedling tray for the new babies. Top it up with some soil and compost, place your seed inside, sprinkle a little water and seal with a kiss from the sun.

There’s always an opportunity to go green and get kids in on the action too. Having everyone around the Christmas table applauding their hard work and discussing their creation is a fantastic way to reward their growing green fingers. Give your guests something meaningful to take home and let’s ditch the plastic this festive season.

Source: Life is a Garden