guide
Baby Sprout instructions
The guide that ships in every Baby Sprout kit: how to plant it, how much to water, and what to expect week by week.
For: families, partners
Initiatives · 2020–present
Baby Sprout
One pot, one plant. A mint garden that fits on a window sill.
- The box
- One ceramic pot, one plant — mint first
- Also grows
- Basil, chives, oregano or parsley
- Soil and seeds
- Organic, non-GMO
- Time to first harvest
- Under 20 days
How it started
MintBox started as a school project in the Avenues Mastery program. We modeled the pot in CAD, cut the first run of 25 by hand on a laser cutter, and wrote the growing guide with our humanities teachers so it read like something a person would actually follow. The first 25 boxes were gone almost immediately, and feedback from the people using them led to the ceramic 2.0 pot.
The design settled on one pot, one plant — mint first, because it is the most forgiving thing a first-time grower can put on a window sill. Everything is in the box, the soil and seeds are organic and non-GMO, and mint is ready to cut in under twenty days.
We are a nonprofit. Boxes are donated, not sold — more than 2,000 of them so far, through partner organizations across the city.
How it works
The pot is the whole system. Seed goes a quarter inch under the surface — deeper and mint will not find the light, shallower and it dries out before it roots. The soil mix holds water without waterlogging, and the drainage tray catches what runs through so a window sill stays dry.
Mint wants four to six hours of light and soil that stays just damp. The guide in the box covers the first thirty days day by day; after that the plant mostly wants to be cut. Every stem you pinch above a leaf pair splits into two, which is why a box that gets used gets bushier instead of running out.
30 days
Watch a kit grow
Thirty days in one scroll. The five herbs germinate and mature in the order they really do — parsley is genuinely that slow.
Basil
Chives
Mint
Oregano
Parsley
Day zero: seeds sown a quarter inch deep, watered in, set on the brightest sill in the room.
What grows
Choose a herb
Every kit ships with seeds for these. Pick one to see what it needs and how long it takes.
Basil
- Germination
- 5–10 days
- Sunlight
- 6–8 hours, a south-facing sill
- Water
- Keep the soil damp; water when the top inch is dry
- Harvest
- From about 3 weeks — pinch just above a pair of leaves
- In the kitchen
- Tomatoes, pesto, anything with olive oil
Pinch the growing tip early and it bushes out instead of running to seed.
In the kitchen
What to make with your mint
Fresh mint is not a garnish — it is an ingredient you can build a dish around, and the point of the box is that you always have some. Six things to make, roughly in order of effort.
Fresh mint tea A handful of leaves, torn once, in a mug of just-boiled water. Steep five minutes. This is the single most used recipe among families with a box, and the reason mint disappears faster than any other herb we tried.
Mint water A few sprigs in a pitcher of cold water in the fridge for an hour. Cheaper than anything in a bottle and children actually drink it.
Yogurt-mint sauce A cup of plain yogurt, a big handful of chopped mint, a pinch of salt, a squeeze of lemon if you have one. Goes with rice, grilled anything, or as a dip. Keeps three days.
Mint on fruit Torn leaves over cut melon, strawberries, oranges or pineapple. A little sugar if the fruit is early-season. This is a two-minute dessert.
Quick tabbouleh-style salad Whatever grain you have (bulgur, rice, couscous), a lot of chopped mint and parsley, chopped tomato and cucumber, olive oil, lemon, salt. The herbs are the point — be generous.
Mint chimichurri A handful each of mint and parsley, a garlic clove, olive oil, a splash of vinegar, salt, chili if you like it. Blitz or chop fine. Spoon over roasted vegetables, eggs, beans or grilled meat. Keeps a week in the fridge.
All of these work with the amounts one box produces in a normal week of pinching.
What is inside
- Ceramic pot
- Organic, non-GMO potting soil
- Non-GMO herb seeds
- Beginner's growing guide, written with humanities teachers
- Drainage tray
Photographs
Gallery
Impact
What we have done so far
- Boxes donated
- 2,000+
- Every MintBox physically built and donated to a person or partner organization since 2020. The total through August 2023 (about 200) is documented on the old site; the figure of more than 2,000 through 2026 was reported and re-confirmed by the team in 2026; the St. Clement's Food Kitchen partnership alone accounts for about 400 of them. Year-by-year records for 2024 to 2026 are still being reconciled. Boxes built but still in storage are excluded.
- EDU kits donated
- 75
- Baby Sprout EDU boxes donated to partner classrooms and shelters. Of these, 50 went to four Covenant House shelters in August 2023 and 25 to Avenues Lower School classes. The old EDU and Covenant House pages showed these two figures side by side without explaining that one is a subset of the other.
- Raised since 2020
- $2,500+
- Gross funds raised through grants, awards and individual donations since 2020, used for materials, tooling and delivery. MintBox is a nonprofit: boxes are donated, not sold. Early fundraising included a 2021 stall at the Union Square Greenmarket.
Materials
Guides and materials
guide
Gardening at home
A beginner's guide to growing food in a New York apartment: light, containers, watering, and what is realistic on a window sill.
For: families
Field log
Build log
August 2026
First session at VISIONS at Selis Manor
A morning session at 135 West 23rd Street with KidsKnowRights, hosted by VISIONS' program and community engagement team, for blind and visually impaired New Yorkers. We committed about 60 boxes; the pot shipment arrived broken, so 10 went out on the day and the rest are being scheduled. Mint is a plant you can grow by touch and smell — this partnership is shaping every guide we print.
June 2026
Two thousand boxes
Somewhere this spring, the total number of MintBoxes donated since 2020 passed two thousand. It took three years to donate the first two hundred and about two more to donate the next eighteen hundred. The year-by-year records are being reconciled for the impact page.
May 2026
200 kits to school families
Requests came through a parent form and delivery ran to homerooms rather than entrance pickup. Demand outran supply — more than 40 additional families asked after the first giveaway, so the form closed when materials ran out. Every family already on the list still received a box.
March 2026
The bilingual planting guide ships
Every kit now carries a printed guide in English and Spanish — five illustrated steps covering location, filling the pot, planting, watering, and growth — with a QR code linking to more. A guide a family cannot read is decoration; this changed who the box works for.
February 2026
A joint community event at Saint Peter's Lutheran Church
Alongside KidsKnowRights and the Language Service Club: the church hosted and made the introductions, the wider effort collected toys and clothing, and we handed out garden boxes and taught planting. The partnership model working exactly as designed — and left open for more.
November 2025
Planting workshops begin at St. Clement's Food Kitchen
Distribution paired with a hands-on workshop rather than a drop-off: families plant their box before they take it home. About 400 boxes have gone out through this partnership to date, and it is ongoing.
September 2025
Kits at the New Sanctuary Coalition legal clinics
We began distributing kits to families attending NSC's weekly pro bono immigration legal clinics, alongside the childcare program a MintBox member founded and runs there. The boxes travel through a relationship that already exists — which is the whole model.
July 2021
A summer stall at Union Square Greenmarket
We manufactured 75 more boxes with the ceramic 2.0 pot and spent the summer at Union Square — early fundraising, and the best lesson we ever got in explaining the box in thirty seconds.
June 2021
Laser cutting the first 25 boxes
We developed the first MintBox pot in CAD through the Avenues Mastery program and cut a run of 25 by hand on a laser cutter. Every one found a home within days.