How does your (Salt) Garden Grow?

Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary
How does your garden grow
With silver bells and cockle shells
And pretty maids all in a row

I guess in the winter, there aren't too many gardening opportunities, unless you happen to set up a Salt Crystal Garden. My friend, co-worker, and fellow engineer geek came across this neat science experiment to grow a salt crystal garden. Using chemicals found in the supermarket, you too can create a garden full of salt blooms and coral structures. The recipe is found at Mrs. Stewart.com, and only requires table salt, laundry bluing, water, ammonia and a sponge (or charcoal or other absorbent medium).

We combined the water, salt, ammonia and bluing and poured it over the charcoal. 5 days later, this is what we have:

with close ups of the crystalline growth:



And I can tell the crystals are really growing now, as the thing is getting bigger by the hour. My friend's daughter's garden has "exploded" and has over grown its container. We'll have to see how big ours get.

Geeky, yes..... but an easy and kind of cool thing to do when it is FREEZING outside!