Making Your Own Seedling Cups!

When starting seeds, you will need many small pots to grow in. There are of course plastic pots available for this purpose, but why use those when you can make your own at home and recycle all at the same time? While there are handy gadgets available in gardening catalogs to help you make newspaper seedling cups, you can easily make seed pots from newspaper with things you already likely have in your own home.

Take a single page of black and white printed newspaper and cut it into quarters or fourths. It is not advised to use newspaper with colored ink on it, particularly when working with plants that produce food as there is concern that colored inks are not safe for human consumption.

Depending on what size seed pot is desired, grab a can to use as a template. A small can like tomato paste works well for a small mold, while soup cans create medium to large pots. Wrap the newspaper loosely around the can, taping the newspaper closed with just a tiny bit of tape. Form the bottom of the pot around the bottom of the can, and secure it with another tiny piece of tape.

Slide the can out of the newspaper cup, and you will have a little seed cup that can be filled with soil and seeds. You can use a garden marker to write what is planted in each newspaper cup on the exterior of the cup.

Like peat cups, newspaper seedling cups wick water, absorbing it from the bottom, so plants can be watered from underneath. This is a much more gentle method for tiny seedlings than watering from above which can be damaging to delicate new plants. Don’t let the seed cups come into contact with each other or they might stick together.

When it comes time to plant the seedlings in the ground, you can simply drop them into the ground, newspaper and all. You may want to remove the bits of tape before placing the cups into the soil. Don’t plant the seedlings if they are really wet. Let the seed cups dry out so they’re easier to handle when you plant them outdoors.