Coal Gardens

My growing up years was so different from children today. We could never have imagined many of the learning tools children have today. We lived simple lives that repeated themselves day after day during school months, and we amused ourselves with simple pleasures during summer vacations.

My brothers, sisters and I usually did things as a group. I was the oldest and as the younger ones of us 8 children reached the age of 4 or 5, they joined in with us older ones and participated.

In the summer we swam, hiked, rode bicycles, skated, and had cookouts. After dark we played hide and seek, or sat on the front door steps with chums or caught fireflies in jars.

In winter we skied or went ice skating on the frozen river after school and in the winter evenings we did our school homework after supper and listened to the Fibber McGee and Molly on the radio while we popped corn, or made fudge, or sat on the kitchen floor and cracked black walnuts.

Sometime during the winter, when things got tiresome with so much cold and snow and the same old routines became dull, Mom and Dad would liven things up with showing us how to grow coal gardens. Before going to bed, we would arrange our individual dishes of coal with the solutions so that in the morning when we woke, we would see crystals that had formed in the night.

No two were ever alike and we were eager to experiment with food coloring and tried to keep the tiny fairy gardens growing for as long as possible When they failed we started new ones. I remember making the gardens with pieces of coal and vinegar but there is another recipe using ammonia to create the crystal gardens.


Recipe 1.

Place a chunk of coal, or broken pieces of charcoal briquette, or porous stone, or pieces of cork, or a clinker, or a broken brick in a non-metallic dish.

Mix the following in a jar:

6Tbsp unionized salt
6Tbsp bluing
6Tbsp water, distilled preferred
1Tbsp ammonia

Pour over the coal or brick. Dab spots of food coloring on the coal and place in a draft free location. Crystals start to form and when the solution runs out mix more and gently pour into the bottom of the dish to keep the garden growing.

Bluing can be purchased in most stores and has the coal garden recipe on the label. You can buy it on the web at this address: http://www.mrsstewart.com/


Recipe 2.

Use pieces of coal, charcoal, or brick.
Stir salt into warm water until no more salt will dissolve.
Add a spoonful of vinegar to salt solution
Pour over the coal. Add a drop or two of food coloring.
Keep adding solution so capillary action continues.



Ingredients for a Coal Garden

A Coal Garden