Tired of finding plastic Easter grass in the laundry clear into summer?! Here’s our favorite alternative to Easter grass: wheat grass grown in place of plastic Easter basket. This living Easter basket tutorial will teach you how simple it is to grow your own live grass for Easter baskets. We’ve also included a few other natural alternatives to Easter grass in case you need options. 
Other Easter Ideas:
Sourdough Colomba Pasquale (Italian Easter Dove Bread)
Blown Eggs for Easter
Natural Dyes for Easter Eggs
Alternative to Easter Grass for our Easter Baskets
When you home educate five kids who love nature, you end up with a lot of rocks, sticks, flowers, and moss on your kitchen counters. I decided years ago that I needed to round all that up into one central place.
So, now we have something akin to a Waldorf nature table with a grapevine creation we call the holiday tree. The holiday tree holds homemade ornaments for whatever homestead holiday we’re celebrating that month. It also has artwork, natural crafts, feathers we found on walks, and pinecones we’ve picked up along the way.
On the same table, we place all the aforementioned rocks, sticks, flowers, and moss. Around this area we will also place our living Easter baskets, which is a tradition we borrow from our Finnish friends.
- In Finland, many people plant ryegrass in pots and decorate their homes with it as a reminder of the new life this season celebrates. Children will usually come along and add paper chicks and bunnies to the pots as decorations.
To grow living Easter baskets, about three weeks before Easter Sunday, we plant wheat seed in shallow plastic pails indoors. We keep them damp and watch them spring up as bright, green grasses (further instructions below).
These become our Easter baskets, where the children leave small gifts for each other and for the Easter Bunny, and where he in turn leaves select treats. The parents in our house have been known to contribute a few small gifts to the Easter baskets, too.
We prefer to leave religious or garden-centered gifts like:
- little hymnals
- scripture-based coloring books
- garden gloves
- seed packets
Some candy ends up in the baskets (especially our homemade gumdrops), but not so much that we all get sugared up and lose focus on what this day is truly all about.
Alternative to Easter Grass: Living Easter Basket Tutorial
This living Easter basket tutorial is very simple, I promise. You can grow your own alternative to Easter grass with wheat seed and have vibrant green Easter grass for your children’s baskets.
To plant a grass basket for Easter baskets, you’ll need to plan to plant the seed about three weeks before Easter. We used wheat seed to grow up a lovely, quick, green crop, but you may also use barley.
Alternative to Easter Grass: Plant a Living Easter Basket
Equipment
- 1 Easter Basket
- Florist's Foil or Plastic Liner/Bag
Ingredients
- 1/2 - 1 Cup Wheat or Barley Seed
- Potting Soil to Fill Your Basket
- Water
Instructions
- Choose a basket or container at least six inches deep. For this project, you don’t worry about drainage holes in the bottom of the basket because the grass seed will only be in the container for a few weeks while it’s growing and while it’s on display as an Easter decoration.
- Line the container with a florist’s foil or a plastic bag and fill the container with a light potting soil 1”-2” below the rim. Wet the soil so that it’s damp but not sopping. Do a squeeze test by taking a fistful of damp soil and squeezing it hard. If it lumps nicely together when you open your hand, it’s ready. If water runs down your arm, it’s far too wet and you’ll need to mix in more dry soil. Find that sweet spot of “evenly damp.”
- Sprinkle the seed on top of the soil. Each seed will put up one blade of grass, so sprinkle on as many as you like without having the seeds pile on top of each other very often. (Some will and that's ok.)
- Smooth about ¼” of soil over the top of the seed to cover and pat down lightly. Tell your kids that they’re tucking their seeds into bed. Sprinkle a light layer of cinnamon on top of your soil as an anti-bacterial. Place the basket someplace warm and plan to check it regularly.
- Use a spray bottle to keep the topsoil moist. Because there are no drainage holes in your container, it’s important that you do not overwater. Cover the container with plastic wrap and place it in a warm area. If you see any signs of bacteria or mold, uncover the containers to let them air out. Don’t allow the soil to completely dry out, though.
- You should see the seeds start to germinate inside a week. Once they start popping out of the soil, remove the plastic (if you haven’t already), and put the containers in direct light.
- Keep the soil evenly moist throughout the growing process and start making plans on how you’ll decorate your basket once it’s done growing. Sometimes, the grass grows so vigorously that you might have to give it a haircut before Easter with a pair of kitchen scissors.
Notes
Alternative to Easter Grass: Living Easter Basket Tutorial Notes
Choose any watertight container that is at last 6″ deep. Pre-moisten the potting soil for best results and tamp it in, but not too forcefully. Place seed in one layer and cover to keep moist.
Keep in a warm-ish place and watch for sprouts. Remove to a sunlit place once you see grass poke its head up from the soil. Keep moist but NOT wet.
The Easter grass may grow so tall it starts to flop over. Use kitchen scissors to cut a few inches off the top until it stands firmly on its own.
Once you’re done with it for the holiday, you can feed it to your livestock or compost it. Remove the grass from the basket before you give it to the animals because they may damage it. (Or eat it, in the case of goats.)
You don’t need to use a traditional basket; any container will do!
5 Other Alternative to Easter Grass
If you don’t have time to grow a living Easter basket, you can use these quicker natural alternative to Easter grass.
Moss and Lichen: Harvest this from downed trees on your own property and be judicious about how much you take. Shake it slightly to remove any early spring bugs. Return the moss and lichen to the forest when you’re finished using it to pad your Easter basket.
Cut Grass, Leaves, Flowers, & Herbs: Cut a bit of fresh grass, leaves, herbs, blossoms, or whatever is blooming in your garden when Easter appears on the calendar. Since is Easter moves around between March and April every year, this can be a fun surprise for the kids to see what’s different from last year in the bottom of their Easter baskets.
Natural Confetti: Use the same mix we outline in our article, Make Your Own Natural Confetti, to fill your Easter basket. Compost whatever is left, or toss it outside for birds to use to pad their nests.
Tissue Paper or Homemade Paper: When we enjoy papercrafts like Making Paper or Decorating our Canning Jar Lanterns, we always end up with leftover paper bits. Save these and use them to enliven your natural Easter baskets.
Colorful Fabric Scraps: We keep fabric scraps for all kinds of crafts, especially to make our holiday fabric scrap wreaths. However, our fabric stash is huge and it’s easy to fluff up our Easter baskets with the colorful scraps.
Do you have a favorite alternative to Easter grass? Be sure to share it in the comments section so other readers can try your brilliant ideas!
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