Roll Your Own Newspaper Peat Pots
A free way to start seeds that is easy to do.
Peat pots are really the way to go in terms of not stressing out the your seedlings. When they get large enough to stick in the ground, you do just that: dig a hole large enough and stick it in the ground. Because you don’t have to transplant the seedling, you don’t disturb the roots (which will quickly grow through the peat and out into the garden) and the plant is stronger out of the gate because of it.
One problem: peat pots cost money. You can easily make your own out of newspaper though, and spend nothing. What you’ll need: newspaper (small weekly readers are preferable, or you can rip regular-sized newsprint in half), one steel vegetable can with both ends removed, and that’s it! To make the pots, lay one piece of newspaper flat and place the can on one end of it. The lip of the can should be just over the edge of the newspaper, and the newspaper should extend for about another can length atop the can. In other words, if you’re looking at the newspaper laying flat, the paper is about two cans high by however long wide.
Then, just roll up the can/paper until you have a tube that’s open on both ends. You don’t have to be fanatical about making it tight, or you won’t get the can out, but it should be fairly tight. Push the end of the tube that is just paper in towards the can end so that you wind up with a little paper cup. Pull out the can, and you should have a little “peat pot” which can stand on its own. These should be fairly strong and hold together until you go to transplant them, but you should still treat them a little carefully and not bang them around if you can help it.
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This entry was posted by admin on Thursday, March 15th, 2007 at 3:52 pm and is filed under Gardening. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
I’ve used these the past couple of years and they work great! One tip: only use regular black and white newspaper sheets. The colors in inserts such as ads can contain chemicals, etc. that you wouldn’t want in your soil.