Little Farmer Easter Baskets

A simple way to celebrate Spring and Easter is to notice signs of new life in nature. You can carry this idea even further, by transforming a traditional Easter basket into personal mini gardens to be planted for spring. You can use wooden wine boxes to make little raised beds and filled them with veggies, flowers, and kid-sized gardening essentials.

Not only are these boxes easy (and inexpensive) to put together, but they provide a project for the little ones that will last all spring and summer. Happy Easter! Happy Spring!

Make a Little Farmer Easter Basket this year. It's candy free!  |  Design Mom
Make a Little Farmer Easter Basket this year. It's candy free!  |  Design Mom
Make a Little Farmer Easter Basket this year. It's candy free!  |  Design Mom

Materials

– Wooden wine boxes. Find them for a few dollars from a local liquor store.
– Weatherproof wood stain. This box features Behr solid stains in Slate and Ponderosa Green to get a dark, opaque green. A sample sized can (about $2) was more than enough.
– Paintbrush

– A variety of spring plants. Head to your local garden store and purchase two combinations that (according to the gardeners’ advice) would grow well together and be fun for the kids. One of these boxes holds two marigold plants, one chocolate mint, and a Roma tomato. The other holds a flowering strawberry plant and a variety of herbs. Pay attention to the full-grown size of your plants — if there are too many, they’ll crowd each other out as they grow.

– Gardening Essentials. Of course, what counts as essential is up to you. These boxes include a kid-sized trowel, shovel, and spade, a pair of gloves, a gardening tool belt, garden markers, a package of seeds, and a few paper pots for starting the seeds. Also included are garden-themed children’s books — Grandpa Green, by Lane Smith, and And Then It’s Spring, by Julie Fogliano.

-Treats to hide among the foliage (like candy and or a toy bunny).

Instructions

Use paintbrush and wood stain to paint the sides and entire inside of your wooden box. Stain dries quite quickly, so by the time you’ve finished the inside, the outside will be ready for a second coat.

Make a Little Farmer Easter Basket this year. It's candy free!  |  Design Mom
Make a Little Farmer Easter Basket this year. It's candy free!  |  Design Mom

Cover box with a second coat of paint. If using two colors, as I did, use your top color for this coat. Let dry.

Make a Little Farmer Easter Basket this year. It's candy free!  |  Design Mom
Make a Little Farmer Easter Basket this year. It's candy free!  |  Design Mom

Stuff your box! Start with the plants and then nestle the other goodies among them, so that they appear to peek out from the leaves. Hide little treats inside the plant pots and leave the basket in the sunlight for your little ones to find on Easter morning.

Make a Little Farmer Easter Basket this year. It's candy free!  |  Design Mom

And once the surprise is over, it’s time to prepare the gardens! Place your sprouts in the box in a mixture of potting soil and mushroom compost, being careful to position them according to the specifications for each plant. Leave the boxes in the sun, water regularly, and wait for the magic to begin!


Created for Design Mom by Elisabeth of (no longer published) My Growing Home.

29 thoughts on “Little Farmer Easter Baskets”

  1. LOVE LOVE LOVE this idea! I’m always looking for was to un-junkify Easter Baskets and this is one of the most perfect solutions! I’m all for a little treat here and there but an entire basket of candy for my 5 year old? no thanks! She will LOVE this!
    the stuffed-bunny link ends up at a 404 page though :( would love to see the tutorial if it still exists!
    THANKS!

    1. I have a ways to go but will remember this thoughtful idea. I’ll never forget a Valentine’s Day box that my mother mailed which was along this idea. Thanks for sharing.

  2. These are wonderful. Just wonderful! We are replanting our gutter garden next week….if I can find the time to get these together before Easter they would be perfect!

  3. This is such a great idea! For some reason we’ve been having an incredibly warm spring here in the Upper Midwest, so we can think about plants instead of snowmen! Ours might be a slightly scaled-down version, but I think it would still be adorable. Thank you!

  4. This is a very creative way to get kids into gardening. It would also make a nice kid centered hostess gift for a longer visit. I can’t wait to make one!

  5. Beautiful idea! I actually did something similar for my daughter last year. I decided that her basket though would be a pot she could plant the flowers in! And we are going to reuse the same one this year.

  6. Here I am, Wednesday, dragging my feet, not wanting to give in to chocolate and flimsy baskets, and you have shared the most perfect idea! My girls love flowers/plants, so this idea fits perfectly. Thank you!!

  7. Last year, we filled our baskets with seeds, child sized gardening tools and gloves. They had a blast planting all the seeds and working in the garden with me and we harvested veggies well into September. I love how these baskets takes it a step further and gives the children their very own gardening box (without the weeds!) and has a few plants already started! This is a lovely idea! I adore the tiny bunny and will be making three of my own!

  8. Ah! I love this! We don’t do baskets or junky candy, and I like to incorporate seedlings that my sprouts (see what I did there, lol) can baby all summer long.

    I do wish that bunny tutorial was still available, though. Thank you for the inspiration!

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