Square Newspaper Seed Starting Pots : MrBrownThumb

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http://mrbrownthumb.blogspot.com/2013/01/square-newspaper-seed-starting-pots.html

When you are in the grips of seed starting season you’re looking around the house for items you can upcycle into seed starting pots. Along with yogurt cups, takeout containers, and soda bottle seed starters don’t forget to dive into the recycling bin and make your own seed starting pots from newspaper. You can roll-your-own seed starting pots from newspaper, but you can also make square newspaper seed starting pots, too.


Making your own seed starting pots from newspaper is an eco-friendly way of starting seeds for your garden. You keep newspaper out of landfills--if you aren’t recycling it--and it is cheaper than buying seed starting pots every year.

Newspaper Seed Starting Pots Supplies

Obviously, you need newspaper to make these seed starting pots. A pen or marker to help you make lines, scissors to score your guide lines, and either tape or stapler.

HOW TO MAKE YOUR OWN SQUARE NEWSPAPER POTSCut your newspaper sheets into large squares. It helps if you use a square pot or container to ensure you make the base of your square newspaper pots large enough to hold more than two seedlings. Make your guidelines by drawing lines from the corners of your template pot to the corners of your newspaper. I used a marker to help illustrate this step, but you can use pencil or nothing at all and just make the cuts.

The next step, after you have cut along your guidelines, is to fold the edges of the newspaper sheets in the sequence I have marked. Fold in the first tab, and then fold in the second and third tab. Try to get the edges of tabs two and three to overlap.


Now either staple or tape the three tabs of your newspaper seed starting pot together and repeat the folding and stapling for the bottom of the other side of the pot.


You now have a perfectly square newspaper pot you can use to plant more than one seedling, or you can use these newspaper seedling pots to pot-up smaller seedlings into a pot with more room for their roots to grow.

NEWSPAPER SEED STARTING TIPSAs I mentioned above, you do not need to use a marker to make your guidelines. You can use pencil or nothing at all. Use newspaper printed with soy ink to make your seed starting pots. If you are unsure of what kind of ink is used to print the newspaper you have on hand, pull out any sheets that use color ink and leave those in the recycling bin.

If you have ever started seeds in newspaper pots before you know that after a couple of weeks they can start to fall apart pretty easy. It is best to use newspaper seed pots for seedling you will be transplanting out into the garden soon. You can make your newspaper seed starting pots a little more durable if you use a minimum of four sheets. Finally, when you are ready to plant your newspaper seed starting pots in the garden, pull out the staples or tape you used to hold them in place.

Need more seed starting tips? Check out the tab here for seed saving and seed starting tips. It lists all of the seed starting and seed saving posts and garden videos I have made on the subject. You can also use mySeed Snatcher custom search engine that is exclusively about seed buy, seed starting, and seed saving.

Do you make your own seed starting pots from newspaper?