Marigolds in Space - and in Your Garden! Seed Saving with Kids
Do you or your friends have marigolds in your garden?
Well, astronauts are growing them on the International Space Station, too.
Here's an activity to bring the research on the space station home, for even very young children.
We harvested marigold seeds from flowers today and then planted them in our garden. The above photo shows a child's hand with marigold seeds. There are flecks of soil under her nails and on her arm.
A Gift that Keeps Giving
Our daughters gave me a marigold plant for mother's day. But our 6 year old became sad when the flowers began to fade. I taught her how to pull off the wilted flowers to encourage new buds to form. It's a process called dead-heading.
Curiosity Leads to New Life
Then out of curiosity she ripped apart the old flowers. She soon found seeds, and knew what they were. It made her so excited. She started planting them all over our yard. They soon began to grow! Do you like to save flower seeds, too?
Here is a video of our harvest today.
And a picture of the children's hands tearing apart a marigold flower to find the seeds.
Here is a photo of our second generation orange marigold plant.
I have a public Facebook group where I share these sorts of photos. I would love to have more friends post about their adventures in gardening with kids. Here's a link:
Marigolds in Space!
Did you know that Marigolds are growing on the International Space Station?
Read more about it here!
And here!
https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/experiments/explorer/Investigation.html?#id=8358
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