Wednesday, February 3, 2010

Recycle those toilet paper and paper towel tubes


Some of you may already know about this and do it, but I just heard about this recently so have been saving the tubes.

Today I took some of them and made them into little seed starting pots. They are bio-degradable and I don't know why I didn't know about this years ago, as lots of thrifty people have been doing this a long time.

When the seedlings are ready, just pop the little pots in the ground, and you won't disturb your roots. I took some pictures and the process is really easy peasy.


Here is the ready to-go-tube.



The next thing you do is flatten it,
open it back up and flatten it the other way,
so that you end up with a square shape.



Next, take your scissors and cut half inch slits up each crease line.
You will then have 4 tabs,
then you fold them like a box.

There is your little pot
ready to be filled with your potting medium.



I put mine in some sort of container that we had gotten from the grocery store, and had a domed lid that would fit over the top to keep the moisture in. I cut up the small venetian blind slats for markers, using a pencil to write on them. That works great!




My little project doesn't look as great as what Tom
of Seventh Street Cottage does,
but it will do for now.
Check out his blog as he is a real inspiration
with his cloning machine and winter sowing of seeds.

Happy Gardening




Zone 10 ~ s.e. FL


7 comments:

Kit said...

Wow! How cool is that! I never ever thought of that. Looks great to me. Kit

tina said...

It looks really great! And what a super use for something that can quickly build up in one's house-especially if you have a lot of girls living there.

Debbie's Garden said...

thats such a good idea! Why didn't ALL OF US think that sooner????

sweetbay said...

That's a great idea!

Becca's Dirt said...

I have been getting bad about hoarding lately. It just so happens that I knew I could do something with them. What a great idea.

YayaOrchid said...

Great tutorial FlowerLady! I'll go check out that blog too. thanks!

Corner Gardener Sue said...

Cool pots! I'm not sure if I'm going to start many this year. I still have some of those expandable pots from last year. I have discovered they don't break down, though, so if I use them, I'll have to tear them apart more than just from the bottoms.