How to Grow Cress Egg Heads

Last updated on March 17th, 2025 at 11:53 pm

This indoor gardening activity is a fun way for children to plant fast-growing cress seeds inside an empty egg shell. The kids can personalize each egg head by drawing funny faces on the shell. Then they can watch as their egg characters sprout green hair (which happens to taste great in egg sandwiches).

How to Make Cress Egg Heads with Funny Faces

If you’ve never grown or eaten cress, this engaging little project will introduce you to fast-growing sprouts that are nutritious and delicious. Because cress seeds sprout in just a few days, and are edible in about two weeks, the whole family can watch the growing process then enjoy the fast harvest in sandwiches or salads.

See Tips for Growing an Indoor Herb Garden for more indoor gardening ideas. For more egg decorating fun, see Devilled Egg Chicks, Boiled Egg Bunnies and Beautifully Colored Devilled Eggs.

Project Instructions:

1. Prepare the Eggshells – Carefully crack the top of an egg and pour out the contents (save for cooking!). Rinse the eggshells gently and allow them to dry. Or you can boil some eggs for breakfast and place them in egg cups for serving. Slice off the top third of the egg and set aside. Enjoy your breakfast then use a spoon to scoop out any pieces of the boiled egg that remain inside the shell. Wash the shell and let it dry.
2. Decorate the Eggshells: Place your clean egg shell back in an egg cup or an egg carton. Now take a magic marker and make your mark. Draw a funny face on each egg shell with a black Sharpie or colored felt tip pens. A wide range of facial expressions are possible, so you might want to practice a few on paper until you create a face that you like.
3. Add a Growing Medium: Cress just needs a little moisture to sprout. You can easily provide this by adding a moistened cotton ball, a piece of damp paper towel, or a combination of moist compost and soil to the egg shell.
4. Add the Cress Seeds: Sprinkle about a teaspoon of cress seeds on top of your growing medium, pressing them down lightly so they contact the surface.
5. Seed Care: Place the seeded egg heads back into their egg cups or egg cartons then set them in a bright spot in your kitchen. A sunny windowsill is ideal. Add a few drops of water every day to keep them moist and growing.
6. Watch the Cress Grow: Most cress seeds sprout in 2-4 days, when the first signs of growth appear. Keep adding water and the sprouts will gain color from the sun, turning from white to green as they mature and add leaves.
7. Harvest the Cress: After your egg heads have sprouted fully, give them a “hair cut” to make an egg salad and cress sandwich. You can add more cotton and more seeds to the same egg shell to grow another egg head!

Science Activity Tips: Teaching children how to grow cress egg heads is a great classroom project for younger grades. Try different growing mediums (moist soil, compost, scrunched-up paper towel, cotton balls etc). Do the seeds sprout quicker on paper towels or soil? Do they grow faster? If you turn the egg heads around while they are growing in a sunny windowsill, what happens? Do the sprouts follow the sun?

A Little Knowledge About Cress

Cress, sometimes called pepper grass, is an annual herb which has a distinctive peppery taste that adds a pleasing note to cheese, egg salad, or salmon sandwiches.

It also makes a wonderful, nutritious addition to salads and a good substitute for watercress.

Cress is a nutrient-rich microgreen packed with:

• Vitamin C – Supports the immune system and helps with wound healing.
• Vitamin K – Important for blood clotting and bone health.
• Folate – Essential for cell growth, especially during pregnancy.
• Iron – Helps prevent anemia and supports energy levels.
• Calcium – Strengthens bones and teeth.
• Antioxidants – Help protect the body from damage caused by free radicals.

This recipe for Easy Fried Rice with Microgreens uses half a cup of curly cress for its unique flavor and zing, without the burn of nasturtium leaves.

Growing Cress Outdoors: You can scatter cress seeds lightly in an area of your herb garden, or a small section of a flower bed, or grow it in a pot outdoors. Cress is a vigrorous grower so you may quickly have more than you need.

If you let it cress growing outside go to seed, you can collect the plentiful seeds and keep them until next year. That way, you’ll have enough cress seeds available for a classroom full of egg heads or enough to grow multiple cress egg heads all year long.

Variations and Resources: