1st Batch of Garden Seeds Planted!

Yesterday, I planted some seeds.  Half of these will be kept for the aquaponics setup and the others will go in my garden.

For this, I usually use some plastic flower pots I reuse.  This year, I decided to try the famous newspaper seed-starting pots.  The pros and cons of them:

• Black and white ink with paper are not dangerous for the plants, which means I 'll just plant it with the pot when the seeds have grown.
• Extremely cheap
• It takes about 80 seconds to make a single pot, without the dirt.
• Can't contain a lot of medium if there aren't multiple (more than 2) layers of paper.

I never did some of these before, so I had to try various techniques.  This is the result of the most popular techniques.

Left made with a glass as the mold and right with origami only 

As you can see, the result of the origami pot isn't great (I did four of them and they were all the same).  There are only two layers of paper on some sides and as the base.  I think it will not be enough.  Maybe the reason why the origami one is bad is that I used rectangle newspaper (in here the usual format is not the same as in the US).  

Also, both of them are pretty big for seeds.  I can probably make the left one smaller by using a tinier glass or any other mold.  The origami pot could be done if I cut the paper to a certain format but that's getting too complicated compared to the basic one.

I decided to make 28 with a toothpick cup. Here is how to do them:

1. Cut a single page of black and white newspaper and find the mold you will use.
2. Fold it in half, horizontally.
3. Fold again, from the center, to the height of the pot you want to make.  the folded part will be your pot's "walls".  Make sure that the thin part of the paper is big enough to clog the future hole.



Step 3

4. Put the paper vertically, around the cylinder you chose.  The limit has to be right before the beginning of the thin part of the paper.

Step 4

     5.  Push the thin part inside the mold.

Step5

     6.  Gently remove the cup and fold back the thin part as the bottom of the pot.

Step 6

   

     7.  Put back the mold but from the opposite side and compact the bottom.

Step 7

     8.  Remove the cup and your pot is ready!

Now go make some and plant your seeds!

From left to right: 3 rows of cherry tomatoes, 2 of sweet basil and 2 of oregano.

He is watching you.

Don't use the dead people's pages.