Pinterest Project: Mini Garden in a Crate

About a month ago, Josh brought clementines home from Food Lion in this crate. I was more excited about the crate than clementines. I LOVE crates, but just never could justify the prices I was seeing in stores.

Now that I had a couple of these beauties, I set out for some ideas on how to repurpose them. Here's the one I settled on....

{A planter!}

The blogger from the pin decided to plant paper whites, but I was dreaming of my garden and decided that this is where I would start my seeds and maybe start a little indoor herb garden.

I still can't believe how easy this was. Here's what I did:

I lined the bottom with a plastic bag...

Put some rocks in the bottom for drainage...

I trimmed the excess plastic and tucked the sides of the bag down where you can't see it as well....then filled the crate with Miracle Gro organic garden soil. I love that stuff!

The only thing left to do was decide which seeds I wanted to start with....

I decided on parsley, basil, romaine, spinach and swiss chard. I let the seeds soak for about 48 hours in water. I only meant to let them soak overnight, but you know how it is sometimes, you forget everything. :)

So, when I finally planted the seeds, the romaine seeds had already sprouted and it only took about a day for the little green baby leaves to pop up out of the soil. Love that!

I couldn't find my popsicle sticks I would normally use to label the seeds so I just settled on pieces of paper taped to the back of the crate.... not going for perfection here.

The crate lives on a floating shelf in our kitchen right by a sliding glass door that gets tons of light. I think the seedlings are very happy there.

I've seen where people have painted their crates and stenciled "Herbs" across the front (here's a really cute one). You could also do a coat of chalkboard paint and write on it....tons of options here. I just happened to like the crate the way it is. Maybe I'll do something like that later, but right now I am absolutely craving bright color. :)

Aren't they cute? Now, if I could just tell them all apart, we'd be in good shape! ;)

{Linked to We Are THAT Family and New Nostalgia}