If you start your own seeds or do any sort of transplanting I have 3 words for you ... ALERT! ALERT! ALERT! That means you should pay attention to what I'm about to say. Sometimes it also means a tornado is coming, but in this case it means if you want to use paper pots for planting your seedlings, now is the time to start making them.
Skip right to the instructions.
First off I have to say something very controversial. I like plastic pots. Which are in fact made of plastic. I think they're superior in a lot of ways to anything else for starting seeds. They hold moisture well and you can reuse them for decades.
In a post coming up I'm going to outline all the different "pots" I use for planting and why, but for now I'm going to teach you how to make newspaper pots which are an environmentally friendly way to pot up your sprouts for direct planting into the garden.
It's seed starting season so if you want to make this the year you finally start your own seeds and grow a garden full of vegetables listen up.
MATERIALS
- A paper pot form OR
- Any straight sided glass bottle with a recessed bottom
- Newspaper
INSTRUCTIONS
Wrap newspaper around the bottle smush the bottom together and WHAMMO, you have a paper pot.
I RECOMMEND USING A GLASS BOTTLE.
Sorry for yelling, but it seemed the best way to make my point. The paper pot makers you can buy create very small pots only suitable for very small seedlings.
Wanna make paper pots? Grab some newspaper, a bottle with A RECESSED BOTTOM, and ... well that's it actually. That's all you need. Read on and you'll find out how to make the paper pots and WHY your bottle needs to have a recessed bum.
Step 1
Rip or cut a piece of newspaper.
It should be the height you want your pot to be, plus an inch or two. *
* One inch if your pot is narrow, two inches if it's wide.
Step 2
Roll your bottle until all the paper is wrapped around it.
Step 3
Starting with the seam of the newspaper, push the paper into the recessed bottom.
If you use a can or bottle, or something that isn't recessed on the bottom, the paper won't stay in position and your bottom won't form.
Then your plant will fall out the bottom. The bum is important.
Step 4
Continue to push the newspaper in until it's all wrapped under the bottle.
Push it hard with your fingers or hand.
This will help crease the newspaper and make it more inclined to hold it's shape and not fall apart.
Done
You now have a paper pot.
My apologies to everyone who thought they were going to end up with weed. Now go finish your Cheez Doodles.
If you did a good job your pot will stand up all on its own without any soil or anything in it. If it doesn't stand up on its own don't worry about it, it will once you fill it with soil.
QUESTIONS/ANSWERS
Don't the pots fall apart when you water them? Nope. Not for the month or two you have your seedlings in them. Don't however leave the paper pots in standing water all day and night. Then they will indeed fall apart on the bottom.
Can you plant the entire pot? Yep. Come planting time if you want you can plant the whole plant, pot and all, which is handy for any plants that are sensitive and don't like to have their roots disturbed.
How often should I water them? More often than you would a seedling in a plastic pot. The newspaper wicks away moisture which makes these pots dry out faster than a plastic pot.
What about the ink? This one is up to you. Most newspapers are printed with soy based ink which is perfectly fine and biodegradable. Additives include the pigment which are sometimes organic and sometimes chemical based, and waxes which might be added to help the ink dry faster.
Personally, I think of all the things that might kill me, a newspaper pot isn't high on the list.
The moral of this story? Nothing. There is no moral to this story at all. Now go make a paper pot.
Where can you find newspapers? LOL Our town combined with a few others and now sell a very thin 4 page paper that doesn't have a lot of news or even a lot of fun local people news. In other words, it really isn't a big seller and we have a hard time finding it. Personally, I think it hangs out with the old magazines that I used to order. Face it, Cell phones have taken over. BUT nothing has replaced gardening! You are a wise and funny woman with the power to grow food. That is saying a lot! Newspaper pots are great!
They are getting slim! Or disappearing altogether. ~ karen!
A curious thought...how does Phillip like your owl in residence?
He doesn't appear the notice the owl at all, but he DOES do a lot of vigorous sniffing right under the tree now which he never did before. ~ karen!
Maybe he still needs to figure out how to look up!
Probably sounds daft snit how many sheets thick should the newspaper be?
Hi Maggie. You use 1 sheet. Roll it around the bottle about twice, and then tuck then ends up. You can play with the first few ones to get a feel for it. Then you'll be fine. :) ~ karen!
I have been doing this for years without the inverted bottom. I use a canning jar and fold the bottom in 3 times...the last fold gets a staple, which holds the other 2 sides in. You must make sure that what you are folding in is slightly larger than the jar, so there is an edge to staple. Not sure I'm explaining it well, but if you don't have a wine bottle don't despair...try a canning jar and a stapler.
I love your perspective ! Your funny and I need a little funny while learning at the same time! I’m Going as soon as I’m done typing to make the newspaper potS right now, thanks for the great ideas!!
Thanks for the directions. I will make my paper pots after I empty the bottle of wine. I should have an interesting garden this year.
I don't have Cabernet Sauvignon but I have a bottle of Chiraz. Will that work equally well?
:-P
I love that my favorite blogger gave me yet another reason to buy a big bottle of wine (with a recessed bottom, of course.) It ticks off all those boxes....recycling, gardening, cheap or free, and wine!
LOVE this! Now for something sorta completely different. Inverted bottom? I have a friend that was training for her job (hospital nurse) and was presented to a man in the bed that needed a bath. She was washing him (he had an overhanging tummy) and she lifted it to wash his 'privacies' when she couldn't find it. She kept looking and then looked up at him - he was smiling. He said it happens all the time, don't worry, it is inverted. So she had to dig around and get ahold to get it out and clean it properly. If there is one thing good about an inverted pee-er, it is watching as people try to find it.
WHA? wait.....his peni was an innie? noooo way, that's a new one on me....I've seen many, worked in nursing homes.....seen things I wish I had never seen....but an innie?
This is a great idea.. now if you would like to make these paper pots even tougher..
Get some Methyl Cellulose. and coat the outside.. this stuff would also make it not needed to have recessed bottom..and hold every thing together.
1 pound of Methyl Cellulose is about 15.00 USD and will make maybe 10 gals of a working solution maybe even more. be real patient with this stuff.. takes forever to truly dissolve in water.. but it will
Hey! The problem with that for planting is, you want the pots to decompose or at least fall apart relatively quickly once they're in the ground otherwise the roots of the plant will have no way to get out and the plant will eventually just get rootbound, the soil in the pot will lose all nutrients and then it will die. ~ karen!
nopes that is not a concern.. this stuff is water soluble and all it does is give the paper a tad more strength... give it a try it just might fool ya
Grin .. I can tell you never lived in the tropics.. a plant WILL find a way to get out of the pot.. ever noticed the broken concrete in your lovely city where that plant trees.. I have seen trees grow on rocks..
But your worries are noted..GRIN
Thanks Karen - this is awesome on so many levels since they don't seem to be recycling plastic planting pots - i love things that can decompose right into the ground. Which wine bottle will I use....hmmm....
Haven't seen my little wooden pot maker for years- but remember it worked well. Using a wine bottle-great idea. That's why we keep you, Karen, you are very inventive! Seems kind of late to be starting plants, but I could use the inspiration right now. Maybe today's the day.
Thanks Karen!
Karen, thanks for sharing your experience! What kind of soilless mix do you use for starting the little babies?
Many thnks, Anne-
Hi Anne! I'm not actually sure what brand it is. I get it at my local seed supply store. All soilless mixes are pretty much created equal since they don't have any nutrients in them. Just peat moss, perlite and vermiculite. The benefit to it is there's no disease or bacteria in it since there's no actual soil in it. Sometimes it has fertilizer added. Any soilless mix should work well for you. ~ karen!
Hi! Love this idea, planning on making mine today for tomato seeds... Q: can't I start the seeds in these & separate to more newspaper pots when needed?
I haven't started from seed since I was 15: will natural lighting work or just one grow light? Recommendation?
Thanks!!
Hi Anne,
Technically you can start the seeds in your paper pots but generally speaking you're better to use soilless mix for starting seeds and then move the transplants to regular potting soil when they get a bit bigger.
You can give it a shot though. Natural lighting works fine as long as it's very strong. The advantage to grow lights is you can raise and lower the lights depending on the height of the seedling (keeping the light very close, about 3" from the seedling ensures a nice stocky plant that doesn't get leggy)
But most people just use bright windowsills and still have great success. Good luck! ~ karen
Hello,
I like seeding plants and have a lot of used notebook paper and would like to use it as pots. Do you think the chemicals used in this kind of paper would harm my plants?
Best wishes,
Mateusz
Hi Mateusz - Probably not, but I'm sure there are others that would advise against it due to chemicals leeching into your soil, etc, etc. The newsprint has ink on it too and no one seems to take issue with that. :) However, the one problem I DO see, is the notebook paper is probably too stiff to use. Newspaper is softer, and therefore easier to mould into pots. Good luck! ~ karen
I don't know about anywhere else but down here in south Louisiana you can go to your local newspaper printing establishment and buy "end rolls" of newspaper for a dollar or two. It's the leftover paper that was not enough to make the next printing run so there's no ink on them. I buy end rolls for a variety of purposes.....gift wrapping, drawing paper for the grandchild, drawing paper for the hubs and I, to wrap around dishware and glassware for packing or storage, kite making, cover tables when doing messy projects, fire starting....anyway, you get the idea. There's usually quite a lot left on an end roll....you'd be surprised!
❤️ this idea!
Huh! I'm gonna look into that. Thx! ~ karen
I too, have made these for years but was too cheap to buy the doohickey so use a juice glass. I also make a slurry of water with a bit of flour in it, then dip the paper in this before putting on the glass. It is easy to slide off and I put them on a cookie rack (darn, no cookies left)to dry overnight. You don't need to wrap as much paper this way and the flour helps to hold them together (remember kindergarten?). It also holds the bottom right where you want it. When they are planted, I put them in a plastic shoe box ($1 each) and use clothespins to clip another plastic shoe box upside down on top. Makes a mini greenhouse. Ta-da, all done now until time to replant.
To the other Janet on the page:
No the bottle doesn't necessarily need to be empty for this to work. If you do still have any contents in the bottle you can do one of 2 things... One, (my favourite of the 2 options) is to drink the contents, you will have a great time planting your seeds as you sip away at your wine. Two, find the original cork ( or cap) and seal off the bottle. Lick off any drips off the side of the bottle (we don't want to waste anything) and make sure you don't drop it as you work.
I'm going to try it with a soda can this weekend.
Hi Karen--- found you via Pinterest and now you're stuck with me. I've had one of these little pot jigs for years, and just hit on an idea this year: use the fold of the paper on the bottom and if it is a bit damp it folds better and stays put. Double the next strips to 7 " and fold vertically to 3.5”.
My crops are in, just waiting for warm weather. In the meantime Mother Robin had remodeled her nest (amazing job, by the way...wish I could post before/after) and I DID tear my backyard out, so I'll be tending beds tomorrow.
Cheers--Cathy
Stuck with you huh? Well ... O.K. I can live with that. ~ karen!
What a brilliant idea, I cant wait to make some with my kids! (im actually fighting the urge to go wake them up lol) though I get the feeling ours wont look as well put together as yours do I think chaos may ensue!
I got one of those doohickeys two years ago. And while I had great success constructing little paper pots, my plants failed to thrive in them. :-/ They would dry out faster than I could water them and as such, I had dessicated plants when I came home from work.
Any suggestions short of hydroponics?
Whitney - This is the first time I'm using them as well (I've used decomposable pots before) and I was worried about the same thing. They absolutely DO need more watering than plants in plastic pots. As far as I can tell there isn't anything you can do about it. ~ karen!
You have to bottom water them, even if the pots get soggy. The paper soaks up the water and keeps it away from the roots. The soggy pots won't last as long as you might hope, but they absolutely need the extra water.
Hi Jane. I've been doing these for years now and I would not bottom water them. The bottoms just aren't strong enough to sit in water for extended periods of time. And since most seedlings are in their pots for 1-2 months it isn't practical. I simply water from the top more often than I would with a plastic pot like I mentioned in the post. ~ karen!