PEA gardening skills challenge 2025

I am thinking of challenging myself to do the skills in the PEA garden badge this year.  NOT to earn the badge as I will not be following the restrictions on pots(No plastic, cement, porous terracotta, or Styrofoam pots may be used). Rather I will be using pots and grow bags that I already have and work on developing the skills each of the steps is designed to teach us. I am hoping others will join me and we can all post our progress or lack of progress.  Grin and no I won't be upset if you want to follow all the rules for PEA I just don't have the energy to try and locate suitable items to use in place of the pots I have already.

The PEA gardening badge says "Using organic (or better) permaculture techniques to grow nutritious food and improve air quality regardless of potential limitations on your location. Projects include fertilization methods, seed saving, and urban-friendly means of expanding your permaculture influence."

PEA Sand Badge Gardening

Create A large potted polyculture(minimum 5 plants and 3 species)
Grow a new plant from a cutting
Grow a tray of micro-greens
Sprout seeds for cooking
Grow a table herb garden from seeds (Must include at least 4 herbs)
Grow a Tuber
Grow a Vegetable Protein
Grow a Fruit
Grow a Vegetable
Grow a Grain
Pot and maintain 2 plants inside your home to improve air quality

Do 5 of the following:
-Seed saving (may be from store bought fruits)
-Grow a plant from seeds you've saved
-Make a vermicompost or compost tea and use it
-Create an indoor mushroom growing system from an existing household material such as spent coffee grounds
-Harvest 1/2 lb of mushrooms from an indoor growing system
-Use vermicompost to fertilize indoor plants
- Use spent coffee grounds or other waste materials to fertilize indoor plants
-Set up a hanging plant
-Pot and maintain some other species of houseplant

It turns out I actually have one of the badge bits finished for this section.  You can read my submission at Sprouting seeds for cooking

For me this was actually an easy badge bit.  Stainless Steel sprouting lids and the wide mouth jars were easy to find on Amazon and even in a few stores in my area in the US but I am not sure how easy it would be put together a similar setup in other places.  
I started looking for seeds designated as seeds for sprouting as I wanted to be sure they had not been treated with anything.  My original thought was radishes or alfalfa but then I stumbled across a listing for Einkorn wheat berries... After doing a bit of research I settled on them for my seeds as they could be used for sprouting AND for growing a grain...  of course I still need to grow some out for the Grow a Grain badge bit but the sprouted/malted seeds made a wonderful porridge.

I think it would be fun to lead my kids through this challenge over the summer. Gonna try it!!

Whoo-hoo!  I was looking for something to grow for microgreens on Amazon and stumbled across stainless steel "germination trays" on sale for under $16!  They are suitable for sprouting larger seeds and for growing them on until they are ready to harvest as micro greens.  To be honest I do have a small plastic set of trays designed  specifically for raising small batches of microgreens that I got from Home Microgreens  a few years back.  The setup works very nicely for small batches of microgreens and their information on growing various microgreens were a great help to me when I grew them the first time.   The metal trays are larger and will allow me to grow more at a time and allow me to either move away from my little plastic setup or include it in a rotation that will give me a more continuous harvest of microgreens.
A few reviewers mentioned that the trays worked best with larger seeds like peas but one reviewer stated she uses unbleached paper towels in the tray when using smaller seeds and she can then transplant the sprouted seeds or let them keep growing and harvest as microgreens.