The Jiffy Greenhouse is a nifty, inexpensive way to introduce children to the joys of gardening. The green house comes in a plastic tray, about two feet by one foot with a clear plastic lid and seventy-two individual peat pots.
In order for you to properly understand this product review, you have to understand that I have a black thumb of death when it comes to plants. I don’t know what I’m doing wrong – I don’t think it is just one thing – but I am just not good with plants. Between my inability to maintain healthy plant life and my sons’ *ahem* youthful exuberance, any success in the horticultural sciences is a major victory.
And we had some success. We killed more than not. But we learned together. We watered, we watched. The kit really does make it pretty easy. You just add warm water to the little dry peat pots and they expand into slightly larger and much moister peat pots. With seventy-two individual compartments in the tray, it is simple to plant a good variety of plants in one go.
The greenhouse does its trick and the seeds germinate quickly (1-3 days). From that point on it is pretty much up to you. My boys really enjoyed using the spray bottle to spritz the tiny little seedlings. The hardest part was curbing their enthusiasm so that we didn’t drown the plants or blow them away with the sprayer.
In the final analysis – the product did what it was designed to do. It allowed the seeds to germinate and provided a step by step program to bring them from seed to transplant. It did not do what I had hoped, which was fully engage my sons in the process. As previously stated, they liked the watering. The rest, not so much.