Dirt- Foam Part 5

The final foam project - dirt!

Specifically, a rectangular patch of dirt

to plant flowers in.

and herald in the warm, happy, growing seasons

that are spring and summer.

These are the old unicorn food flowers. 

The fuzzy-looking purple flowers were from the 

dollar section of Michaels -

a very affordable way to fill a flower bed.

But dirt is also good for vegetables! These plastic carrots

were another dollar-store gem - 8 in a pack. They had

powdered candy in them, which I emptied out.

I first saw a similar dirt bed at our local children's

museum and it turned out to be Emily's favorite exhibit.

Each time we were there, we had to play hunt-

the-flowers because the other kids liked them too. It

made me wonder how many little kids would enjoy

planting and picking flowers and vegetables in

their very own dirt patch, so I thought I would do a

tutorial in case their parents wanted to indulge them.

Sadly, it had to be abandoned halfway for two reasons:

First, the photos all looked like this:

Bad. Very bad.

I mean, what is that, for goodness' sake?

Goaty-looking, is all.

Even in focus, they were absolutely unhelpful.

Second, assuming I could even explain how to sew

the brown flannel case, the foam was very

uncooperative to insert into it.

I couldn't possibly, with a clear conscience, subject you

poor folks out there to something like that, could I?

Therefore, here is a modified version of the dirt bed -

this needs a box to contain it so the ends do not have

to be sewn together. If you buy one of those rectangular

planters from a garden store, it might even look a bit

authentic! But any old cardboard box is great. The pattern

below is for a single-furrow dirt bed but you can modify

it for two furrows like the one I made.

Note: The box also provides a nice pressure on the

long sides of the foam to keep the furrows narrow.

But don't make the foam fit too snugly in the other

direction because the end-to-end pressure would

only make the furrows gape open instead.

Now this dirt is so versatile that I'm betting it can also be

made of cardboard! Anything can be made of cardboard,

really, but I'm not going to get started on that here.

Either way, the right fabric will make it work so much 

better - so stick to something that has a brushed 

surface - flannel, fleece, velvet, velour and the likes 

are all good. Avoid silk, satin, quilting cotton, 

chiffon - you get the idea.

Another alternative idea came to me as I was in 

my neighbor's garage* the other day. She had some 

of those foam pool noodles sticking out of a box, 

and I'm almost sure that if you cut two or three 

equal pieces out of one, wrapped each snugly in fabric, 

and stuffed them side by side into a tightly-fitting 

box, you'd get some decent dirt, too.

So, now that we've discussed some of the exciting 

ways to make dirt, I'll confess why this project took 

such a long time to get posted (apart from me

generally being slow, I mean). The dirt itself was 

finished in just a few days. But I wanted to go 

overboard as usual and make some plants

with pick-able strawberries

and pea pods-

you know, to sort of compensate for my

 very ungreen thumb with real plants.

Supposed to have been a winter project but look 

when it finally got done! Maybe the girls can practise 

for the late-summer harvest of the real stuff in our 

backyard garden (planted by husband, luckily, 

so likely to thrive).

The bendy stems of the plants are fabric-covered 

piping with a wire insert. The strawberries and pea 

pods have velcro stems that allow them to attach to 

little velcro squares on the stems. 

When the girls started playing with this

today, even little one-year-old Kate was able to

plant and pick flowers and harvest fruit and vegetables.

She also tried to plant whole strawberries in the dirt,

but at least she got the whole gardening thing right

anyway. More ideas to further complicate this came to

me as I lay in bed but I drew the line at making small

caterpillars to hide among the leaves for the kids to

find. I, who have serious caterpillarphobia!

Lunacy, that's what it was. So I didn't. Phew.

Go to the next posts for tutorials and patterns for

the plants, strawberries and peapods!

*No, I don't usually lurk in neighbor's garages looking for craft inspiration. 

Edited to add the flower patterns - forgot yesterday.