Newspaper Pots for Starting your Seeds- Sneaky Gardening Trick #1

If you don’t want to shell out the cash for plastic potting trays for your starts this spring, you can use this easy method to make your own nontoxic, biodegradable pots for your seedlings.

You’ll need:

-black and white newsprint pages from an old newspaper

-an 8oz. mason jar or other cup of a similar size

That’s it!  Making the pots is just as easy.

1.       Separate one half-page from your paper and fold it in half.

If it is a full page, as in one that is folded in half in the newspaper, you’ll want to rip it in half so it won’t be too thick to break down once its transplanted.

2.       Lay the mason jar on one end with a little bit left hanging off the edge. This is to make sure there is enough paper to fold over in the final step. The open end should be pointed toward the side with excess paper.

3.       Roll the paper around the jar.

4.       Fold the ends of the newspaper into the open end of the jar. This will form the bottom of your pot. Fold so that the paper overlaps, but don’t fold so far that you end up with an open bottom.

5.       Pull the paper pot off the mason jar.

6.       Repeat until you get your desired number of pots.

Simple, affordable, and practical.

You can use these like regular plastic pots and just remove the soil and seedling from the pot when transplanting. If you live in the Pacific Northwest like me, this is a must since our climate is too temperate create the night/day fluctuations in heat needed to break the newspaper down enough for the young roots to get through. You could use them this way if you want to play it safe, or if the seedlings are more delicate.

If you’re going to be taking your soil and seedlings out for transplant, then its fine to use colored pages (as you can see I did above, since I won’t be able to just pop these babies in the ground).

Stay tuned for more sneaky gardening tricks. Follow Handmade Life.