Paper Pots

This morning I was lucky to spend a wonderful 45 minutes with some of the first grade students at Oakwood School. We made pots out of newspaper, planted pea and corn seeds, looked at all kinds of soil additives, smelled gardeners gold (shredded leaves) and set up a praying mantis tank.

You would not have known that it was hailing as I drove to the school, in that classroom it was GREEN!

These photos show the steps to making your own pots out of newspaper. I will be doing this program with many more students in our district. What fun!

To make newspaper pots you must first take a single sheet of newspaper and fold it lengthwise.

Next, take an empty container such as a jar, water bottle, soup can or so on and roll the newspaper around the container. Leave a good 1.5 inches overhanging on the bottom.

When you are finished you will have a tube like this.

Next, take the bottom of the tube and fold it in so the paper overlaps and forms the bottom of the pot. Don't worry if it's not pretty, or perfect, it's not supposed to be.


This is what the bottom looks like. You can use a piece of tape to hold it shut but I don't use anything since the tape would not breakdown in the garden.



Next, slide out the container from the inside. Take the top of the pot and fold it over to form a collar that will hold the whole thing together.

This is what the collar will look like when you finish. Don't worry if it tears a little, that happens all the time.


Finally, fill your pots with potting soil and then plant your seeds. (These are last years photos so they show sprouted pots instead of newly planted ones)

Hooray! A perfect alternative to plastic pots. You can plant your whole pot in the garden since the newspaper will breakdown quickly and the seeds will keep on growing.

If you'd like to know what I use to fill the pots, you can jump over to my other gardening blog, Melanie's Old Country Garden (just click on the title here).

Happy potting!