Last year my seed trays were a bit of a disaster, because the roots were shocked when i pulled them up out of that nice planting soil and put them in my less than perfect garden soil. So I did a little research, and found out about making newspaper pots to start your seedlings in. They are biodegradable, so when my little vegetables are ready to go into the ground I can just plant the whole thing and hopefully there won't be any shock or root damage. And unlike the biodegradable peat pots they sell at the store, they are FREE (if you have a newspaper and some tape) and honestly they didn't take more than an hour to make.
So I bought 8 different vegetable seed packets as well as some petunia and zinnia seeds and made up about 45 newspaper pots yesterday afternoon. I put two seeds in each pot, and hope that one of them at least will take off. In case you want to try them out, here's how I made them.
First I did some online research, and saw that people made them many different sizes, from a toilet paper tube to a wine bottle. I wanted mine to be about the size of the 6pack seedling we get at the store so I decided to use a glass spice jar that I had from Target. It is sort of square shaped which I liked more than a round pot.
So here's how I made my newspaper pots
Step 1: Open up the newspaper and cut in half. I'd recommend cutting several pages at once.
Step 2: Fold the paper into fourths. Try to have the loose ends on one side, so that the top doesn't have any loose pages (it makes it easier to fold down)
Step 3: Roll the paper around your spice jar, or whatever container you want to use. Leave 1" extra past the bottom of the jar to form the bottom of the pot. Have the side with the loose page ends at the bottom. Once you've wrapped the jar, apply a bit of tape to the side. I used scotch tape because that's what I had, but if you have masking tape it would be biodegradable.
Step 4: Now turning the jar upside down, begin to form the bottom of the pot. It's just like wrapping a present. Push down on one side.
Then fold the rest in and apply a piece of tape.
Pull the pot off of the jar, flip it over, and fold down the top to make it as tall or as short as you want.
And there you have it! Now just continue this process until you have enough pots, or you run out of newspaper (that's pretty much when I stopped as I was having so much fun)
When I finished all my pots I put them in my old seed container trays. These will get a little wet and messy when you water them, so you definitely need to put them in something while they grow.
I filled them up and used toothpicks with some duct tape wrapped around the end to make little flags to identify my seeds.
Here they are before I watered them
When I watered them, I noticed the dirt compacted A LOT, so my next batch I filled them completely with soil, watered them and then filled them up again to the right planting depth. This seemed to work out pretty well. So here are my completed pots all watered up
Now I must admit that I am a little bit messy when it comes to home projects, so I am sure your pots will be a little bit neater with a little less spare dirt all over the place, but I thought it was all great fun, and can't wait to watch my seeds grow hopefully into a fantastic garden this year.
Happy Planting!
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