Your Ultimate Gardening Guide.
Rules
Seedling pot made from an empty toilet paper roll. After germination, it can be buried directly in the garden bed as is; the roots will grow through the softened cardboard, and soil organisms will then consume it. Make sure to only use toilet paper rolls made from unchlorinated and unprinted cardboard.
edit: please check if recycling has a problem with chemicals or heavy metals in your country
This is a good idea, but I might use more durable paper towel rolls cut in half instead. All the world's toilet paper is soaked in a special form of PFAS/forever chemicals that make paper much more soluble in water, or less likely to stick to equipment during manufacturing. That chemical can bioaccumulate in plants and soil, contaminating it for decades, unfortunately.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/mar/13/toxic-forever-chemicals-pfas-toilet-paper
the pots are made from the recycled cardboard part in the middle. pfas in tp are used to make the paper more easily flushable, so i doubt it's used in the part that wasn't meant to be flushed anyway. tp however wouldn't be a good material, because it's not sturdy enough and almost everytime bleached. however i saw that tp in some countries doesn't have the sturdy cardboard part in the middle and now i realise that you probably talk about the cardboard in paper towels because we are talking about the same material...
Oh yup, I meant the brown middle part in paper towel rolls!
Does this work in practice? I think cardboard is too durable for this.
it works really well. i did it several times. the cardboard will get soaked over time until it nearly decomposes by itself. you will need to be careful when lifting the pot to plant it into the garden, but the cardboard wont be a potent barrier by then anymore. the rest will be eaten by earthworms etc. who really love cardboard.
I just did a bunch of seedling starts the same way and it worked perfectly. The cardboard was soft enough for roots to break through.
This is so smart!
We almost did this (I still have the tubes stowed away), but we ended up mostly using soil blocks mainly because forget to harvest tubes throughout the year.
What I like about the tubes idea is that they are about twice as tall as soil blocks or commercial fiber pots/trays (which are also tapered) of the same size. That’s a lot more room for the roots to grow before they explode out the bottom, especially for vegetables that want to start with a long first root.
Heck I’ve convinced myself. I need to start my beans inside this year because of the darn squirrels, so maybe I’ll do it with these tubes and then get rid of the rest of my leftover fiber strips with flowers.
ha, i also use them for beans :D
I'm using egg cartons which are working great but I need to try making some of these too!!
I tried egg cartons one year but the plant roots really struggled to break through the bottom, and my plants were pretty stunted.
Maybe I’ll try paper cartons next time :p
Seriously though, is that not a problem for you? Kinda wonder what you do differently.
This is my first time growing from seed and I haven't transplanted yet, but my friend has been using them successfully 🤷🏻♂️ she's the reason I'm doing it that way (and me having no money lol)
It may depend how sturdy your brand of cardboard packaged eggs are I guess
Only trouble is, if you're just finding out about this now, you won't have enough of them saved up to use until next spring!
Edit: it did just give me an idea to DDG for "origami seedling pot" since something like that could be made sooner, though.
Not at the rate I'm pooping
You need a bidet.
i recommend a worm composter. this way you would collect the rolls anyway (because worms like them) or working as an educator ;)
lemmy needs a remindme feature :D
"remindme" on The Discussion Forum Which Shall Not Be Named was just a bot account run by a third-party. The Fediverse not only has the same, but has several to pick from. (I say "the Fediverse" rather than "Lemmy" in particular because the first one that comes up in the autocomplete is actually a Mastodon account, @remindme@mstdn.social.)
PLEASE DONT EVER PUT RECYCLING-PAPER INTO SOIL!
There are a lot of bad chemicals in recycling-papers!
not in germany, there are not a "lot" of bad chemicals in recycling paper, since the limit values are very strict. however i don't know how other countries handle this. i will put an edit in the original post.
You can make pretty good ones using layered newspaper. Or any paper that doesn't have something nasty in it. Using a cylindrical glass or similarly shaped aid. I've used a big vitamin bottle with the top sliced off. There are a bunch of tutorials.