Thursday, March 18, 2010

Eco-Friendly Seed Starting Pots

Seeds are here! We love Renee's Garden Seeds. She has a large variety of herb seeds and also has heirloom veggies and flowers too.

This year we are starting our seeds in eco-friendly pots that are quite inexpensive and easy to make at home. We have used empty egg shells in the past and they work well except that they are such a small pot. So this year we are making our own pots out of newspaper and also using toilet paper rolls. The rolls are very easy to make into pots. Simply make several one inch cuts on the bottom and fold ends in to form a base and create an instant tall pot.

The newspaper pots take a bit more time to fold but it is a good rainy day project and they can store flat so they don't take up much space. Find complete instructions and a video on how to make the pots here.

For a list of herbs that are easy to start by seed and other seed starting tips. Check out these posts from March 2008.

6 comments:

Linda said...

I too, use toilet rolls and newspaper and I've been reading on more and more blogs that gardeners are using them too.

PeggyR said...

:( I have no luck growing things from seed. I have photo tagged you, please visit my blog to see how to play...

Marilyn Miller said...

Oh I will have to tell my husband the gardener this tip. Thanks!

La Tea Dah said...

What a great idea! Thank you for sharing!!!!!

LaTeaDah
Gracious Hospitality

parTea lady said...

Thanks for the great tips on seed starting pots.

Tiffany @ No Ordinary Homestead said...

Thanks for the shout out to my newspaper pots tutorial! I make at least 100 of these every year and although I get a bit crazy making them, if I can remind myself that it's supposed to be fun & relaxing -- it does go a little more easily.

The pots hold up extremely well and give the plants plenty of space to grow until you are ready to put them in the ground...in case you procrastinate like us or end up planting too soon and can't put them into the ground until later than you expected. But if you are going to leave the plants in for a while, only start 1 or 2 seeds at a time in them, unless you want to cull a lot of seedlings or will split them up quickly.

Happy gardening!