 Hi everyone. I've been reading so much lately about the importance of gardening as we try and get our children excited about eating fruits and vegetables. So I invited master gardener Rita Botini to join us today and I wanted to ask her, Rita, did you plant plants like this with your children when they were growing up? Yes, I did. And did you find that it made them more willing to try these different foods? I do believe it did and I also worked with lots of school children. We grew our own salads and many of the children that I worked with over the years participated in eating their first salad from the school garden. Oh nice. Is it difficult to grow something like this? No, it's very easy. There are lots of seeds out there on the market that pretty much give gardeners all the information that they would need to grow a specific plant. Will you show us how I would plant something like that because that smells so good. If you want to cook a nice pasta dish. This is an Italian basil that is just wonderful. It's very fragrant. And a simple pot with some potting soil. You can simply fill the pot with a light potting mix. The potting mix is slightly damp. You don't want to use a bone dry mix to start out and you'll see that I'm going to tap it down a little bit. You want it to be able to breathe. Right, just a little a little bit firm but not too tight. Okay, and we'll set that aside. And now we'll go to our seed packet and what I was mentioning about the seed packet is it will tell you the appropriate time of year. It depends on where you live. Okay. Basil is an annual warm season plant so it wants to be out in the garden in the summer. Okay. But we can grow this inside under bright warm conditions in our homes on the windowsill. Okay. Do I need some too or do you have enough for both of us? I have enough for both of us. And if you look at these seeds they're very small. Oh yeah. As opposed to perhaps the seed of a pea. All right. Okay. So the size of the seed determines planting depth to a degree. Some plants don't even get covered at all. Oh. This pea seed would go half an inch to an inch deep. So this would be a very easy seed to plant with a small child. But the basil seed is going to be covered about one quarter inch deep. So very shallow, right? Very shallow. Okay. Okay. So what I do is I usually take a little pinch of seeds. So we'll just kind of sprinkle those with a little bit of distance between them. And you know if you get too many you can hand the child the scissors after they germinate. Okay. And they can come snip little micro basil and put on their pasta or whatever it is that they're eating at the dinner table. And now we'll just go back to our potting mix and we're just going to take a small pinch and just lightly cover those seeds. Just very gently cover those seeds. My instinct is to tap it down though. Am I allowed to do that or not? No. See I learned something. So with little bitty seeds if we put too much pressure on them it's going to sink the seed lower than our intended planting depth. So I have a tag. Thank you. It notes that it's basil and what variety and the date. Now back to the seed packet. When we look at the seed packet again it has information as to how long we should expect the seed to stay in the soil and then germinate. So this seed should come up in five to ten days which is why we want to note the date. Okay. What about watering? Do we have to water it? We do. So now we've planted you could use just a simple spray bottle and you would water this really gently making sure that you have thoroughly moistened this. Okay. So after care of the plant is very important. Okay. So this especially for the very tiny seeds like we just planted if you're a very busy person and you put this on your counter and the sun is shining in the window and you go away what's going to happen. It'll dry out. It'll dry out. The surface will dry out. That's where the seeds are. They're very close to the surface. So for small seeded plants I recommend putting a little plastic wrap over the top make it like a little greenhouse. Once you've got that done you're going to check and make sure that it doesn't dry out and in a week or so you should see the little seed leaves come up. They're not the true leaves. These are not the true leaves of the spinach. The true leaves are just beginning to emerge down here in the middle. Once you see your seed has germinated you must remove the plastic wrap. Okay. Otherwise they'll rot. Excellent. Okay. This looks so easy. So much easier than I thought. Well Maya I hope it is and I hope that this will grow for you and your children. Thank you so much for joining us. My pleasure. Thanks Rita.