Grow a Tasty Marshmallow Flower

Creating and sticking to traditions can be a wonderful benefit to families. They help foster a bond between parents and children, provide opportunities to create memories, and contribute to an overall sense of stability. Valentine’s day is right around the corner and today we started a new and whimsical tradition that I look forward to repeating for years to come. Check out these cute  Valentine’s Day “seeds” (heart shaped stones)! You can print my seed packet design Here.

These marshmallow flowers are sure to “grow” whether you have a green thumb or not! All you need is a pot, dirt, and a marshmallow or candy flower. We bought our planter and stickers to decorate it from the Dollar Tree. Adam couldn’t wait to get his hands on them! He put most of the stickers on by himself.

After we finished decorating we filled it with dirt and planted two seeds. One for Adam and one for Owen.

Adam especially enjoyed gathering up the extra seeds and putting them back in their packet.

While he wasn’t looking, I fished out the fake seeds and put in real ones. Rather than water his plant every day only for it to randomly “grow” the night before Valentine’s Day I figured this would be a great opportunity to teach him how to grow things. My plan is to transplant the seedling the night before Valentine’s day and replace it with a marshmallow flower.

Most plants take somewhere around 5-10 days to germinate so if you want to participate in this aspect of the project then make sure you start at least 10 days before Valentine’s day. I bought my seeds (4 for $1) from the Dollar Tree. I looked through most of the packets to find the ones that take the least amount of time to sprout. Here’s what I found:

Cosmos Flowers germinate within 5-10 days
Cucumbers germinate within 7-10 days
Helichrysum germinate within 7-10 days
Zinnias germinate within 6-10 days

Watering Valentine’s Day plants is a very serious business!

And so is taking pictures! 🙂 After the boys went down for their nap I had fun taking some artistic shots of the project. I bought an extra marshmallow flower and went ahead and opened and “planted” it so you (and my impatient self) can see what the finished product will look like on Valentine’s Day!

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