Origami Paper Seedling Pots & Home Made Hot Box

On Friday I was doing some garden reading online and one of the sites that gave me a great idea was Scarecrows Garden Blog. I saw these origami paper pots that she was using to grow her vegie seeds in. They looked great and an awesome re-use of of newspaper. Scarecrow provided a link to the site where she got the idea from and here it is - check them out at No Ordinary Homestead

On Friday I also saw an article on Gardening Australia about making a hot box for growing seeds. It got me thinking about my seedlings and the greenhouse that I have them in and I came to the conclusion that I needed a hot box. Being the re-use kind of person I am (read: tight arse) I tried to come up with an idea that would be a bit cheaper. After a visit to a local Green Grocer for some polystyrene and a visit to Bunnings for some bubble wrap I had everything I needed. As an interesting side note did you know that bubble wrap was originally designed for greenhouses? Well neither did I until my friend Jayne pointed it out so I was pretty impressed with my decision to use bubble wrap.

So onto the photos

The first lot of pots I made while following the youtube clip were kinda big, I realised after making about 5 that they would be too big for what I needed, so then I halved the size of the paper and ended up with a much better size

The great thing about these pots is that you can then store the flat ones inside one that you've folded out

Even though I was using a pen to do the fold lines, after making over 30 pots my fingers ended up quite black

In one polystyrene pot I have 7 Roma tomato pots, 7 Tommy Toe and 7 Beef Steak. I decided to put 2 seeds in each one just to cover any that don't germinate

This one has 7 Sweet Corn but only one seed in each one here

After watering them in I then put some bubble wrap over the top and tied it down with some string. i've put them in a sunny spot against the house bricks as the bricks will hold some warmth

Lets hope that it all works well cos the seeds in my greenhouse in the egg cartons haven't sprouted yet but I think that's cos it just isn't warm enough in there.