Think small.
Planting tiny seeds in the small space that was given you
Can change the world, or at the very least, your view of it.
~ Linus Mundy
There are lots of seed starting trays and kits available at hardware stores and gardening centers. Propagation Flats or Seed Cell Plug Trays come in various sizes depending how long you wish to keep the seedling in the trays. You can start seeds in a smaller cell, and then transplant them into a larger cell once they have established. This can be helpful if you don't have a lot of space, or if you have doubts about the viability of your seed.
You can recycle trays and flats from previous years. Just be sure to wash them thoroughly with dish soap and warm water to reduce the risk of disease or fungal contamination.
You can also make seed pots from found objects, such as: milk cartons; egg cartons; plastic, paper or styrofoam cups; soup cans; laundry detergent caps; spray can caps; and mushroom containers. Wash them thoroughly with dish soap and warm water. Poke holes in the bottom to allow for drainage.
Seed pots are very easy to construct from newspaper since most newspapers these days use soy-based inks. Be sure to use black & white non-glossy newspaper only as color dyes, like red, can poison worms and other soil organisms. It's not only the compassionate thing to do, it's better for soil health. Click here for a Willi Galloway (www.digginfood.com) eHow video with instructions on how to make newspaper seed pots. It seems this works best if you use a glass with a 2.25" - 2.5" diameter, and if the glass is non-tapering (in other words, the same diameter top as bottom). Line a nursery tray or cardboard box tray/lid (like from a box of printer paper) with a sheet of newspaper, and as you finish making the seed pots, place them in the tray. This will help the seed pots to keep their form.
Gayla Trail, author of You Grow Girl, has a great idea for making seed pots from toilet paper rolls. She has step-by-step directions available on her blog.
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A note of newspaper seed pots: The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette is narrower than other papers like the NY Times, so you may need to improvise on the folds. My sister Kristin found that if you fold a sheet of the Post-Gazette in half lengthwise, and then instead of folding it in half again, only fold a portion of it in so the edges are staggered by an inch or so, Willi's method works a lot better. While it may seem simpler, she said folding it into thirds didn't seem to work as well.
ReplyDeleteMy mother-in-law planted her tomatoes still in the newspaper pots and then noticed that her tomatoes weren't really growing and were looking a little worse for wear. I dug them up and removed the pots, and replanted them, and a couple days later, the tomatoes were doing much better. I would definitely recommend removing the newspaper at transplanting time. You can toss the newspaper in your compost pile.
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