Recycling Paper Into Pots For Seedlingss

I like the idea of using recycled materials in the garden. I don’t have to spend more energy to haul them off and paper and cardboard help loosen clay soil while newspaper can help stop weeds. I recycle my own pots and often pick up pots from nursery recycling centers to use but seldom have enough.

A neighbor’s sister is very active in community gardening in Colorado. She recently visited my Hill County neighbor and brought her two of the little wooden paper pot makers. She said they were easy and fun to make. I ended up with one of them and started trying to see what papers worked best. You should not use shiny paper but colored paper like the grocery store ads we get in the mail are fine. But the best pots are made from thick paper. The best paper I’ve found is some catalogs and the newspaper from Fredericksburg. Much of that is on real thick paper. I even made some pots out of phone books but I think it needs to be doubled in order to last at all.

But it is really fun to make the pots and for a hyper person like me, monotonous movement is more calming than just sitting still. My four year old grandson loves to make them also. The process is simple. Make a 31/2 x 11 inch strip and roll it around the pot maker. Then fold in the bottom. I find it is best to have enough to fold completely across the bottom on each fold. If you need to vent frustration, the next step is really fun. Just set the pot maker in the base and give it a rap to push the bottom up and seal it in place.

Then partially fill with dirt, add a seedling or a seed and water gently. These pots will disintegrate with heavy watering. They also have to be in some kind of a tray. And they dry out fast in the hot Texas Hill Country sun and have to be watered at least twice a day. But they can be given away and then popped into a planting hole or large pot and thus the roots don’t get damaged and the plant doesn’t go through planting shock.

I also shred paper to use as a substrate for my red worms. I open cardboard boxes and lay them on my paths in my garden, then cover them with mulch. Once I saw the results of mulching with shredded cardboard. A man planted two identical trees and mulched one with cardboard and left the other one untreated. . The one mulched with cardboard was one and a half times bigger than the other one. After a year, all that is left of the cardboard I put down in my garden paths is the tape which I gather up and throw away.

How do you recycle in your garden?