frugal seed starting pots

Since it is nearing the time to be getting our spring seeds planted in some areas of the country and I have seeds on the brain, I thought I would post up a couple of old but frugal seed starter pots.

We all know about using, egg cartons or egg shells even. We know about using any small container that we can poke holes in but will hold soil. We know about taking soda containers and making ghetto, baby GH's. The problem with each and every one of those methods other than the egg shell is that you must remove the plants from the container when transplanting. With both of these methods you can plant the seed pot and all and the cost is a fraction of what you would pay for a plantable container from a store.

newspaper seed pots
This is one of the first frugal things I ever learned how to do and make. These are really good seed pots to make although you may find you need to use a staple or a piece of tape to keep them together. If you find yourself needing to do this just pull the piece of tape off the bottom when you go to transplant to the garden. There is a method of origami that holds better than these do but it is more complicated and time consuming. You can also buy a doodad to roll your pots around, I find a soup sized can works best.

This is another good project to get the kiddos involved in as it is simple enough that they can make them, plant them and watch their project grow.

This ladies hands are prettier than mine are and she has funky green nail polish on so for the instructions follow this link
http://bonzaiaphrodite.com/2009/03/how- ... seed-pots/

toilet paper roll seed pots
I started doing this with toilet paper rolls when we had about 13 people staying here on the land. That is an enormous amount of toilet paper rolls to simply throw away even if they are just biodegradable paper. Seemed like a waste of something perfectly good to simply throw it away, burn it or compost it so i began to look around and see what I could use them for.

I now save most all of our toilet paper rolls and make biodegradable, earth friendly, free seed pots. Of course with just two of us it is not nearly the amount of empty rolls as we once had..

These work pretty well as pots. They are big enough that a plant can go from seed to transplant stage in one container. The only downfall to them is you must be careful on over watering because they begin to fall apart and then you have a big mess.When you go to plant them in the ground just open the bottom of the paper tube and place the entire pot in the hole.

These are a very simple easy to make project and great to have the kiddos help with.

Here is a site with some pretty easy to follow instructions and pictures
http://www.yougrowgirl.com/thedirt/2007 ... d-starter/