HELP! Need advice for Summer Fayre

brindles01

My son's teacher collared me today for advice about growing some plants to sell at the schools' Summer Fayre in July. Veggies I am okay with but she had in mind flowers or herbs that can be grown in pots and that will look nice enough to sell. The children are 6 years old and so don't want plants that will require 'molly-coddling' but will look good enough to sell. Can any MSE'ers out there please advise me - I might even get a gold star off 'teech' for the advice:D All ideas gratefully received with thanks.

BlondeHeadOn

Herbs would be good, as the seeds are usually cheap and people will buy a pot of basil or mint or whatever to add to their cooking. How about basil, mint, sage, chives or somesuch? You can have a sign on the stall to advertise them as "add fresh herbs to your Summer barbeque salads" or something similar?

I'd buy this sort of plant but probably wouldn't buy bedding plants etc. as late as July.

nodwah

What about dahlias - they grow really easily from seed and come into flower lateish in the summer, and there's dwarf ones, another one is coleus, easy and colourful and can be houseplants or garden

Lord_Gardener

Strawberry plants are also great for selling and are easy to grow! My isual recommendation are Alpine Strawberries - children love them!

eg

http://shop.macmillan.org.uk/mall/productpage.cfm/Macmillan/MCS210

angelavdavis

How about them making cress heads?

Old tights or socks with some seeds in the bottom (you don't just use the toe end - you can make a few out of a pair of tights by cutting them up, knotting one end and turning inside out), topped up with soil and tied up, soaked in water and then stood on a jamjar of water. Make faces for them too. Make up some without faces too and invite people to buy them to decorate themselves?

They will grow really quickly (couple of weeks) and the cress acts as hair!

Other ideas - cosmos are easy to grow - seashells is a particularly pretty variety, nasturiums (big seeds and easy), chilean glory vine - reliable sprouter, Cerinthe major purpurescens (bit unusual but good sprouters and large seeds.

amyandoli

spider plants are easy and cheap, buy 1, and just keep potting up its babies. parrot plants pot up easily too from cuttings, and have lovely flowers. i used to grow these on a windowsill when i was little

Penelope_Penguin

For small hands, cuttings might be easier than seeds. How about trying rosemary, mint, sage. Might get nice little plants by the summer.

Penny. x

lynzpower

Id go for something like thyme, mint, chives

in this instance I might be tempted to cheat and get some sort of supermarket or garden centre plant, stick it in a large planter full of compost and watch it GO! all three of these grow quickly, and are easy to split down.