Jewel Case Root Viewers Two Ways

I love plants. I can’t get enough of them. I could probably count on one hand the number of times I’ve come out of IKEA without a plant of some kind. I come by it honestly though. My mom has always had a house full of plants, and so did her mom. We do not have an outdoor garden, but we do grow plants all sorts of ways indoors. In fact, every spring the kids ask to plant something. Sometimes we move the plants to pots on the deck, but often we keep them inside.

We actually did this in the spring, but we’re trying again now to see if we can grow some plants this fall indoors.

In the spring we planted beans in one root viewer and sunflower seeds in another. I did not transplant the beans and one of the sunflowers in time, but the other sunflower plant just took off and bloomed in a big way this summer. You can use any seeds you want as long as they fit in the case once it’s closed. The nice thing about both the sunflower and beans is that they’re fast-growing plants. It didn’t take long at all to see something happening.

To do either of these you need a full size jewel case. I suppose you could use the slim cases if you were planting tiny seeds, but one nice thing about the bigger cases is that they stand up on their own. 

Let’s try the soil method first.

First you need to take out the insert in the bottom of the case that holds the CD. If you start pulling on the flat part on the left side, the whole thing should pop out without too much trouble. Remove any paper inserts as well.

Turn the case so that the it opens upward. With the case open, put a small amount of soil at the bottom—enough to go at most halfway up. It really doesn’t take much soil. Last time we did this we just put the soil in dry. This time we mixed soil with some water in a bowl and then spooned it into the case.

Put your seed(s) in the soil. Close the case and stand it up. It should stand on it’s own. For added security you can tape the case shut or put a rubber band around it.

Place the CD case in a sunny spot and watch your seed(s) grow!

The top opening is very convenient for purposes of watering your seeds. Just pour a little water through that opening. If you’d rather, you can open up the case instead and pour a little water on the soil or spray it with a water bottle. This is actually what I did last time, because it didn’t occur to me until too late that I could have watered without opening it. Either way, check to make sure no water drips out anywhere before you put it back where it came from.

Once you’ve got a hardy seedling growing, you can transfer to a pot and keep the fun going. We left ours in the case longer than I’d intended to, but that just meant that we had a very hardy seedling by the time we moved it to its pot. It was apparently very happy in its new home!

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Paper Towel Method

I would leave the insert in this one so that it doesn’t dry out as fast. If you take out the insert, it will leave that same hole that is so nice for watering 

Fold a paper towel and cut it down so it fits in the case. Wet it before you put it in the case. 

Place your seeds in the case. As you can see, we used 5 seeds in this case. In the spring we used 5 seeds of the same kind of bean. This time the kids asked about trying different kinds of seeds in one case, and I thought that sounded like a great idea.

Because we used different kinds of seeds this time, I used wet erase markers to label them on the outside of the case.

Once you have the seeds in place, stand up the case and put it in a sunny location. Make sure to check it every day to make sure the paper towel doesn’t dry out completely.

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Additional fun…

To make this an even more educational activity, you could mark the case once your plant starts growing to track its growth.

You could also decorate case with stickers or by drawing on it with markers. How cute would little bugs or worms that look like they’re in the soil be?!