Grow Easter Grass in a Basket - in 5 Days!

Easter grass that you can grow in 5 days. Turn it into a centrepiece, a live grass Easter basket or as the base for a flower arrangement. Easter grass is edible, obviously biodegradable and incredibly easy to grow. 

It's that time of year again. The time I bring you an Easter DIY that has NO pastels, NO fake eggs and NO Easter bunny dressed in yellow plaid overalls.

I'd like to welcome you to my annual post where I talk about my distain for traditional Easter decorations.  I don't know what it is about Easter specifically that seduces people with perfectly good taste to throw all their design sense out the window but it's a genuine phenomenon.

Homes that are normally rustic & cozy have mint green buck toothed rabbits sitting on their coffee tables.  Homes that are normally chic & sleek are riddled with 20 year old plastic eggs with the white bloom of ageing carcinogens on them.

That white bloom isn't actually carcinogens. It's oxidation, but that didn't sound as zippy.

IT DOESN'T HAVE TO BE THIS WAY.  There is help.

You can ditch the plastic grasses and eggs and grow your own Easter decoration in just 5 days. Or even sooner if you'd like to make an Easter wreath.

Use your homegrown easter basket grass for an actual Easter Basket, flower arrangement or centrepiece. It would also make a pretty impressive base for a spring themed gift basket.

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Easter Grass

Easter grass, which you can grow in containers or baskets is actually common rye or wheat seedlings. Both grow incredibly quickly (with rye growing faster) and their seed is easy to find.

Materials

• 1 package of Rye grass or wheat berries
• 1 basket
• Garbage bag or other plastic to line the basket
• Soil
• Moss (totally optional)

But remember you don't need a wicker basket. Below I'm using a loose wire basket. You can use anything that you can line in plastic to hold the soil in.

Instructions

1.  Line your basket with plastic then fill it with soil.

2. Trim the plastic so it's level with the soil or just a bit above it.

3. LOAD the soil up with seed.  Over-seed.

Like this.

4. If you're using a basket like mine where you can see the plastic and soil from the sides, fill that area with moss.  Most baskets won't be like this though.
5. Scratch and press the seeds so they're all in contact with the soil.

6. Spray the seeds until they're damp.  Don't pour water, only spray.  If you pour water onto the soil it'll wash the seeds in all different directions and you'll have patchy grass, as unattractive as a 14 year old boy's first moustache.
7. Cover the top of your basket with something plastic. You want to trap as much moisture in there as possible so the seeds will germinate.  As soon as the seeds germinate (in as little as 2 days!) remove the plastic and keep the grass watered; first with spraying and once it's established you can use the tap or watering can.

No joke.  This is what your baskets will look like 5 days after planting the seeds.  I had mine under my grow lights which was helpful, but this will also work in a sunny window.  

Rye grass is pretty forgiving (i.e. almost a weed). Wheat berries (which eventually turn into wheat) are easy to grow as well.

Edible Easter Grass

The easiest cereal grasses to use for Easter are rye grass and wheat grass. BOTH of these can be used to make healthy green juice shots with a juicer.

By the way you don't need a massive electric juicer for making wheatgrass shots. You just need a little hand turned slow juicer.

Ryegrass will resemble actual grass and be very uniform. Wheatgrass will have a bit more of a stalk. Keep in mind the wheat grass on the right was grown for actual planting so it isn't planted as dense as you would for an Easter basket. That's why it looks sparse.

BUT - Wheatgrass does take a week longer to grow than Ryegrass. So just keep that in mind.

Trim your grass at this point but don't take too much off.  Just a little off the top. You can use what you've topped off for juicing into grass shots.

The next day you can trim a little more, until the grass is as short as you'd like it. Then just keep it trimmed every couple of days to keep it where you like it.

You might like it nice and neat and level with the top of your basket or you might want it a bit higher.

Now you have 2 options; make some sort of arrangement in the basket with a few natural elements like twigs and flowers.

To turn your grass into a flower arrangement, stick branches directly in the soil. For any live blooms, put them in some of those little water vials and stick those in the soil.

Or use it as a genuine Easter Basket.  If you have kids ( or a husband/wife who insists on an Easter Egg hunt for themselves every Easter morning) there isn't a kid in the world who wouldn't like using an Easter basket with real grass growing in it on Easter morning.

Yes that is a little Rough Linen pinafore.

No it isn't pink, no it isn't plastic, no it isn't tacky.  But Easter doesn't have to be.

Unless you want it to be.

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