Just so you know, an herb botanically speaking is a plant whose stem does not produce woody, persistent tissue and generally dies back at the end of each growing season. But common usage is a plant used for dying, culinary, or medicinal purposes. If you go by the first definition, any plant lacking a permanent woody stem (like a tree) could be used for your project.

If you go by common usage, thyme, sage, lavender, and rosemary are all commonly available herbs and either have low water needs and/or can tolerate lack of water for longer periods of time. One of your key things over Christmas break is that the plants will need a windowsill or good lighting (like grow lights) otherwise the water won't make much difference. Most herb plants have high light requirements otherwise they will die.

I hope this helps!

FataMorgana

I use a sprouter for growing sprouts of radish, wheat, broccoli and many other seeds. The sprouter is small plastic dishes which stack onto each other. The lowest one has no drain holes but the ones above do. When water is poured into the top unit, it will drian to the next and then to the bottom. The dishes have raised bottoms with slots and small short pins that point up, to help hold seeds just slighly above the surfaces. This works well for many seeds as they sprout fairly fast and have root systems that are never drowned as the water drains quite well and leaves just a damp surface.

ok - let's try some basic mom questions -

how old are you?

what are the parameters of the experiment?

what is the teacher trying to trick you into learning for yourself? if you're vague on this, you're either not paying very much attention to the teacher - or you aren't asking enough questions.

what do YOU want to get out of this project?

Just to be the contrarian, how about an herb such as watercress that you can essentially float / grow in water and soaked dirt and then your water system is merely adding or circulating the water with limited feeding needs? If you start with a pool of water and mud and cover all except the growing portion, you won't need too much water flow to keep it from drying out or dying for a couple of weeks. I'd also suggest looking into water delivery systems that work on the unglazed pot principle since it might provide helpful. And I definitely agree with chinacat ... learn it, don't just do it - if we didn't at some time, we wouldn't be able to try and help you now.

Makalu - you're the person I wanted as a lab partner in science class :)