Do you use paper pots?

Decades ago, a good friend of mine gave me a paper pot maker. As much as direct seeding has huge advantages, in my ecosystem, and with my limited planting areas, many of which aren't that convenient to the house, I find that using paper pots is a big help. However, following the instructions produced a pot that seemed lacking in a number of ways.

For starters, a single layer of paper just didn't last long enough and was too hard to pick up safely, so I started making the paper longer so it went around the pot maker a little more than twice. The manufacturer's instruction was a strip of paper 25 cm long. My favorite length - 40 cm long. The plants can still grow through, but not as quickly, so I can get the plant a bit bigger before it goes in the ground. The pot's a little sturdier in my hand if I have to move them around.

The next problem was that the roots would grow out the bottom too quickly. I've done some reading about market gardening, where they start a lot of seeds in pots so they can transplant when there's space. One successful grower had commented that if the pot wasn't at least 7.5 cm deep, the roots hitting the bottom would encourage the plants to bolt. That's easy to fix! I now make my average pots 9-10 cm deep. The paper width has gone from the manufacturer's instruction of 9 cm, up to about 15 cm. I partly base the exact width on efficient use of the paper I'm cutting up. It takes a good amount of paper to fold over on the bottom, but so long as the finished pot is at least 8 cm - well, more is better, right?



Then comes the real bonus of paper pots! I dig a hole with my trowel, fill it with water, and just drop the whole pot in. There's no transplant shock, because I didn't transplant. If I can't bury the lower stem of the plant (some plants, like tomatoes, are happy with that, some plants not so much) then I rip off the very top of the paper and tuck it into the soil to decompose. If the paper sticks up above the soil, it may wick water away from the plant and in our drought periods, the roots need all the water they can get.

So is anyone else using paper pots? Any hacks you've done to tweak how effective they are?

I bought a paper-pot maker that looks a lot like yours, maybe two years ago. I played with making paper pots for an hour or so but thought they were too fragile to be practical, so I put it away and started experimenting with packing potting soil in toilet paper tubes. Maybe I was just waiting for you to post this!

I assume the cylindrical piece is basically a form for wrapping the paper around, right?  What is the shorter wider disk-like (actually I guess it's technically a cylinder too lol) piece used for?

We've done toilet paper rolls and I've been thinking about trying to make some kind of form for making paper pots, but haven't really gotten serious enough about it to look into what other people have done or actually come up with my own plan.  

Also curious what the diameter of yours is?  (Though I guess you could just make them whatever size fits your preferences...)

Yes, I use newspaper pots for my tomato and pepper seedlings. I just use a soup can as the form.  For small plants like herbs I have done the same with a little tomato-paste can.

Hi Jay,
When I first saw your post, I thought you were talking about the Paperpot transplanter. https://www.smallfarmworks.com/store?gad=1#!/Transplanters/c/29557391

Which I have not used, but have been impressed with. Actual paper pots, I have not. I tend to use soil blocks.

John Warren wrote:I assume the cylindrical piece is basically a form for wrapping the paper around, right?  What is the shorter wider disk-like (actually I guess it's technically a cylinder too lol) piece used for?

The short "cylinder" is for crimping the paper at the bottom to form the floor of the pot. The top part of the pot-maker has an indent that matches the funny shape. I find, that particularly with the extra layer of paper I use, that I have to manually fold the paper over the bottom edge, before pushing it into the crimper, but as I mentioned, I'm looking for something that's more like the coir or peat pots in their ability to last long enough for the seedling to get to be large enough that it can be more independent. You absolutely can repurpose/make something that will do this job without buying the fancy one I was given. I have a chunk of pipe for if I want a really tall pot for some reason and it works fine without a fancy base to press it with.

And wrote:

Also curious what the diameter of yours is?  (Though I guess you could just make them whatever size fits your preferences...)

5.5 cm (~2 1/8 inches)

And wrote:

We've done toilet paper rolls and I've been thinking about trying to make some kind of form for making paper pots, but haven't really gotten serious enough about it to look into what other people have done or actually come up with my own plan.

For comparison, the toilet paper rolls we have are 4.5 cm in diameter and 11.5 cm tall. So the height is comparable to the pot maker if you fold over the bottom so the dirt doesn't fall out. However, I found that the cardboard was harder to work with, and that centimeter less in diameter makes them much tippier.

More important would be the comparison of the volume of dirt - the TP roll is going to hold much less dirt, therefor less room for roots before they start trying to escape. Remember those old math classes where volume goes up by radius squared?

Last night I was chatting with a friend and she mentioned how she *hates* shopping in December because of the crowds. That got me thinking...  a Paper Pot maker seems like a wonderful Christmas gift to me. OK, I'm a bit unique, but seriously, if it gets your friends and family thinking about growing some food, why not?  Add some seeds you collected for an instant garden.

Those of you who have access to wood turning equipment/tools, could even make one your self.

I have recently purchased a paper pot maker and the paper pot bottom worries me. It just feels flimsy! I am hoping to use this for a PEM Gardening BB but I might need to keep a plan B on standby if I can't correct it.

Timothy Norton wrote:I have recently purchased a paper pot maker and the paper pot bottom worries me. It just feels flimsy! I am hoping to use this for a PEM gardening BB but I might need to keep a plan B on standby if I can't correct it.

The base of my paper pot has indents which give it a bit more structural stability than a flat base would. Also, because I use longer paper than the original instructions, there are more layers of paper overlapping at the bottom as well.

That said, I have some bins which I use to hold the pots while the seeds germinate and get to plantable size. I use those bins to carry the pots all the way to their planting location. I generally use them for seeds with a shorter, rather than longer germination time, and I've noticed that warmer conditions like a sunbeam or heat mat make a big difference in getting shorter germination times. Similarly, if I'm trying to grow something that will need indoor care for longer, I will put the plant, pot and all, into a larger plastic pot when the paper pot starts to look fragile.

These don't work for every situation or plant. They are time-consuming compared to big flats, but I don't need a large flat of peas all at once. But peas generally don't like to have their roots disturbed, and they grow quickly, so they're a great plant to experiment with. Lettuce is another one, that seems to do well.

It never hurts to have a Plan B. You could even make it an experiment and do some with both Plan A and Plan B and give us some feed-back?

I like to use folded newspaper pots, my hands get stained with newsprint but it's a lovely mindless activity for cold wet days sitting in front of the fire.

It's handy to make a pile of the pots in different sizes.

I've found that 9 small pots fit snuggly in an icecream tub, useful when starting seedlings indoors because I don't need a drip tray under the pots.

There are lots of videos demonstrating how to fold the pots but this one is one of the easiest to follow

I am a teacher and I use these every spring to plant seedlings with the kids during our "day on the farm". They are a great way to reuse the metric tons of newspaper I get and save some money on pots.

Once you get the hang of it you can make them pretty sturdy. I have found the template size they give isn't the best shape, I make it a little shorter and it sticks better.

We get a free community newspaper where I live, so paper pots are my go-to.  The pots last 2-3 seasons, so they are well worth the effort!  

1. Fold the newspaper down (toward you) in half;
2. Place a travel mug (like you would use in the car filled with your morning coffee), so that there is about 3 inches below the bottom of the mug.  
3. Loosely roll the paper around the mug into a cylinder shape.  
4. Flip your mug around and fold the bottom edges in (like a gift) to create a bottom for your cylinder. Use a small piece of scotch tape to hold it in place.
5. If you wrapped loosely enough, you will be able to slide the mug out easily.  
6. Set the cylinder on its newly folded/taped bottom and then fold the cylinder's top down about an inch at a time to get to the desired height for your finished pot.  This rolling down of the cylinder gives its sides the strength to withstand watering and root growth.  

Fill the cups with dirt or peat, plant your seeds and water as normal.  

Harden off seedlings before planting and they will slide right out of your pot, leaving it ready to re-use for next season.

Hope this helps strengthen your paper cups!! Sure is nice to save money where we can

I didn't take any photos of the empty pots to give an idea of the size so here you are.

I'm lazy about transplanting my seedlings so usually start them in the 3" high pot that a tabloid paper makes.

The broadsheet pot is taller and if your seedlings are really small, a half sheet of tabloid sized newspaper ought to be sufficient.

One more handy thing about paper pots is that I can write the name of the seed on the side of each pot. Then I can cross the name out if it doesn't germinate, and I can try another seed in the same dirt.

Sometimes that back-fires... I was trying to start peppers early and several didn't germinate. I set the pots aside by my potting station and when it was time to start tomatoes, I topped up the pot with a little fresh dirt and popped in tomato seeds. I now have one pot with both a baby tomato *and* a baby pepper. I'm hoping they will be friends - tomato roots tend to go deeper than pepper roots according to something I read sometime. Yes, if I was really smart, I'd cull the pepper, but alas, I'm a sucker for babies.

Glad to see this post, I just made a whole mess of paper pots because my local library begs me to take newspaper for them. Newspaper is quickly becoming my #1 resource on the homestead. Compost, rabbits, seedlings, what have you.

I'm going to try ~selling~ seedlings in these pots, which is likely going to take a bit of brain power on how to make them transportable for people.

We donate newspaper end rolls to a local thrift store for wrapping glass ware. I take a roll and cut it on the bandsaw for the depth of pot we want and just use a regular juice glass or bar glass to make a pot the diameter I want. I fold the bottom into the mouth of the glass then just reverse the glass to press the bottom.

Sometimes, though I've just used a 4x4 block of wood to form mine. The only soil blocker I use is the small four pack for early spring plantings.

Last year I started just using soil balls formed by hand for most crops and had great success, even though they aren't as space efficient. They allowed me to transplant cucumbers without disturbing the roots in any way. I'm doing my melons that way this year as well.

Atypical for our area, we have half a foot of snow on the ground... the projects I would love to be working on are just not snow-compatible.

So I started watching a lovely video about building food forests, and made 10 paper pots while I watched it.

I'm setting the finished ones in a round bucket, so they will not get crushed or loose shape.

So it's just one small way I can get ahead on the planting when Mother Nature is still firmly in winter mode!

I have had very little success starting seeds early and then trying to harden them off. So I mostly direct seed everything I plant. All the usual plants. However, this means at the very end of the season I am hustling to get tomatoes into the house and about a third of time they get hit with frost, or there is a large proportion of green tomatoes.

About a month ago while looking for something do with my 3D printer, I came across a model (there are many of them) and printed myself a paper pot maker. It's 1 7/8 inches across, and 2 3/4 inches tall. In about two weeks I hope to start start making paper pots to start my tomatoes. I have read that they transfer to the garden in a well behaved manner, because they are not being disturbed by being transplanted. I'm hoping that will give them some sort of edge when they have to be hardened off, although I expect that to be a complete failure as it has been in previous attempts.

As a side note, I plant in raised beds. Last year I noticed the walls of my very first bed are becoming well rotted, so this year I'm converting it to an open hugelkulture bed in which I'll plant winter squash, pumpkin and maybe something new like melons. The bed is already half Hugel. All four of my beds have excess wood in the bottom 10 inches and soil in the top 10 inches. This being the oldest of the beds, I expect it to be very fertile and the hugel-layer to be soft and water holding.

The snow is disappearing very fast this spring, so maybe I'll get a long enough season that direct seeded tomatoes will get along a bit faster than usual. That would be nice. Good gardening to you all.

Dale Poole wrote:... printed myself a paper pot maker. It's 1 7/8 inches across, and 2 3/4 inches tall. In about two weeks I hope to start start making paper pots to start my tomatoes.

I hope it all works out. What sort of an ecosystem are you in? My tomatoes are started in a south window with some extra light morning and evening, but the window gets quite cool at night, so they don't get a "cold shock" moving outside. I do try to give them some direct sun for partial days before transplanting. I do think that the fact that their roots have never been disturbed has helped. However, in my climate, we never get really hot weather, so I too, tend to end up with more green tomatoes than ripe ones most years.

To Dale Poole,
A lady I knew used to transplant her tomatoes with a post hole digger.  She didn't harden them off but would plant them at the bottom of the hole leaving the stem exposed but the top leaves below the soil level.  The walls of the hole gave the stems more consistent temperature and if a cold snap happened she put a newspaper over the hole.  The dirt washed into the hole over time to fill it and the stems grew extra roots when it did and the extra roots came in handy when the drier weather came.  At least that was how she explained it to me.  I'm usually so late that all that doesn't matter.  

I use the folded newspaper pot but I use a different design. I find the side flaps on the earlier posted video get in the way and don't stay flat until you've packed awhole tray with them. This design has one or 2 more steps but once you've done a few it's easy. Ialsolike that they store neatly flat until you need them.

We've been using paper pots for over 30 years. Used to roll quartered newsprint around Henry Reinhart ale bottles because they were smooth. These days I've got a fancy olive oil bottle that's taller. Simply roll the paper evenly around the bottle and fold the bottom down in pie sections securing the loose end. Slide the paper off about 1/8" and roll it on a hard surface to crimp the bottom. Slide the pot off of the bottle and fold a half inch of the top creased inside. No fancy pot maker. Now, we do NOT plant the whole pot. I imagine it would digest under the soil eventually but we've never had any real issue with transplant shock and the used paper goes into the compost.

Anyone used the "seed snail"/"millipede" technique for planting seeds? The idea is you take a band of some sort of material-I've seen plastic and foam used but I was wondering if cardboard or folded paper wouldn't work just as well?
You lay out a strip of material and cover it with about 15mm of soil, tamp down a bit, water and then you either lay your seeds along one edge, roll up like a millipede,secure with jute string and tip it on it's side,seed side up. Or you can roll before seeding, tie and tip, tamp down the top, sow seeds and lightly cover with soil.
I'm interested to know what results folks have had. I can see roots having plenty of space to go down, saving a lot of space and easy separation of seedlings, but what about transplant shock?

Home made plant pots

Plant pots for starting seed that will become organic matter in the ground https://www.edenproject.com/learn/eden-at-home/make-your-own-newspaper-seed-pots

and here's a video https://youtu.be/9dkseng3MgE?si=7UZejL05C4mDcHbJ

Here's another… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9_QAZICSsWU

And there's more…
https://youtu.be/7dlGQP81yfo

Homemade Seed Packets

How to make free Homemade Seed Packets from Junk Mail without using Scissors or Glue. Click this link https://www.tinyurl.com/SeedTemplate ​for an easy and free Template printout. How to use it here https://youtu.be/I183eqdMoqw

There's a different way here called a Samurai Seed Saver Improvised Seed Packet http://openpollinated.blogspot.com/?m=1

The Brifka packs diamond dealers make to transport their gems in Hatton Garden would do the job too https://youtu.be/VILMMFu-rk4

https://turkeysong.wordpress.com/2014/03/30/origami-seed-pocket/

Steve Marquis wrote:Home made plant pots

There's a different way here called a Samurai Seed Saver Improvised Seed Packet http://openpollinated.blogspot.com/?m=1

I love the samurai seed saver, its great because you can use anything you have to make it. I usually don't have paper with me but I can always find a paper napkin. I use them to dry my seeds when I'm saving my own squash seeds. I'm usually cooking at the time so to save them going in the bin or forgetting which ones they are, I make a samurai, put the name on the front and smear the seeds inside.

Jay Angler wrote: I hope it all works out. What sort of an ecosystem are you in?

Hi Jay! I'm in Atlantic Canada, 5a/b, Prince Edward Island. My last frost date is around the end of the 3rd week of May. I have a grow tent setup in the house because the house is 2x4 construction and window sills barely hold a pill bottle, they're so narrow. So I usually start in the tent, around the start of April. In previous attempts I started hardening off in that last week of May and transplanted from small pots to the beds at the start of June.

The raised beds get full sunlight all day. The last attempt, the leaves of the seedlings turned white and didn't recover for a couple of weeks. None of them died and they grew well when they recovered, but it doesn't seem ideal to me. I'm thinking some wind mediation might be required - the breeze never stops here, and the beds have no wind break.

I've grown rutabaga, radish, carrot, potato, beets, lettuce, spinach, swiss chard, peas, cucumbers, pumpkin, acorn squash, zuccini, paste tomatoes, beefsteak tomatoes. Over the years, the beds have had a bit of cow and chicken manure, that gets processed through a cold compost pile before getting applied to the beds 2-3 weeks before seeding. The compost pile gets fed year round, even when it's buried in the snow. The beds are at the edge of a hayfield that hasn't been used in 18 years. I mow that part of the yard regularly, adding the clippings to the compost. I've never applied fertilizer to the beds and the only pests I've encounter in numbers is potato beetle when I do potatoes (roughly every 5 years) and that darned cabbage moth.

This year I was thinking I might try some of the so-called green gold, the liquid amendment you make with grass clippings by soaking them in water in a closed bucket for a few weeks.

lol is that what you meant when you asked what eco-system? To be honest, I feel blessed that my only continuing problem is getting the tomatoes started each year. I hear so many problems that other gardeners have with pests, blights, mildew etc. and I understand why a lot of folks give up.

Cheers for now!

Hi  Permies,

I have used toilet rolls for paper pots. Last year with more succes, because I just filled them with plain sand, and topped them off with soil. That resulted in no fungus in the cardboard of the roll, propper wicking of water and propper drainage as well.

I use soil blocks as well. I only have a small soil block maker, so i use it for small seeds and small plants only. Succes is on and off. I dont like to compress the soil so much.

I recycle plastic pots as well, in particular for larger seeds and plants, like pumpkin.

I love the paper pot ideas here. Thank you for the great instruction videos! I read the comments and the evaluations, The pros and cons. I think we need a comparative test of the different models, and started folding. The first thing I noticed is that the dutch newspaper sheet size is quite different from the ones in the video. When a dutch (half) newspaper sheet is folded in half, it keeps approximately the same ratio, while the newspaper in the videos change with each fold from rectangular into sort of square, and rectangular again. Therefore I had to tweak the designs without the flaps (second video) a little bit, which resulted in a similar cubic pot, but with thinner sides and a short firm brim. Since I wanted to try the original design as well, I found some firm creased brown paper, used for filling space around boxed goods, for protection during transport. It has tear lines like toiletpaper. With two strips stil attached, it has a ratio approximately like in the video. The creases made it harder to work with, but the result was a pretty firm pot.

It occurred to me that the pot with the flaps might be a better suitable design for the dutch newspaper sheet size. I made two versions. Because of the different ratio, I could fold it one time less, and make a single layer pot, through which the roots should grow easilly. Without cutting the sheet, I folded a double layer of the same model, as it was intended.

I have trays in which 8x4 rows can be placed. For the comparative test, I plan to use the 4 models described above, 4 of each. I plan on making 4 with the jar method, one roll of toilet rolls, one row with plastic pots of approximately the same size, and one row of soil blocks of approximatly the same size, which i will try to make especially for the occasion in a way I will invent in the comming days. That fills my tray with 8 different seed starting methods.

For honest comparison, I will have to apply the same seeds for all of them. I am thinking beans with cilantro for companion. The pots seem about the right size for it, and i can use 32 bean plants as well.

I will evaluate the pots on the following aspects.
How easy to make / how much work to clean up (for the plastic pots)
Storage until use
How well do they hold up until transplanting time
Transplanting itself
How fast will they disappear after transplanting?
How well do the plants grow in them and out of them.

What do you think? Anything I forgot? Anything to add to the experiment or evaluation? Please feel free to suggest more to take into consideration.

Nynke

Nynke Muller wrote:

I will evaluate the pots on the following aspects.
How easy to make / how much work to clean up (for the plastic pots)
Storage until use
How well do they hold up until transplanting time
Transplanting itself
How fast will they disappear after transplanting?
How well do the plants grow in them and out of them.

What do you think? Anything I forgot? Anything to add to the experiment or evaluation? Please feel free to suggest more to take into consideration.

Well, this a brilliant idea. For my own interest I'd like to hear about how much shock is involved when they get transplanted. Because roots are less/not at all disturbed, when transplant time comes, I'm hoping it will alllow me to bypass the hardening off phase, at which I am dismally poor.

Will you be hardening off your transplants? If so, would it be possible to *not* do that for a few of them? I understand that might not be best practise for your location, but that's all I can think to add to your quite extensive list of evaluations. A general gauge of how well they fare after transplanting would be sufficient.

I think i'm a bit inspired and might try just that part of the experiment - comparing direct seeding of tomatoes, beside paper pot transplants without a hardening off period.

Thanks for your ambition Nynke!

This is great timing to come across this post. I hate using plastic, but I enjoy sharing my extra seedlings. I didn't have very good luck with large soil blocks, and it makes them difficult to share. Paper pots seem to be time consuming, but maybe if I do them in the evening watching TV, or YouTube it wouldn't be so bad. I don't have news paper, but I do have a lot of the brown packing paper that comes in the Amazon boxes ( my son is addicted to Amazon). I like the fact that it doesn't have any ink. I don't think it's big enough to do the fancy fold method, but I'll figure something out.
Thanks

Hi Dale Poole,
Normally I would harden them off. However, I was intrigued by the suggestion of Dale Nute to transplant without hardening off in a deeper pitch. I wanted to try that anyway. Maybe I should do it 50-50. Maybe I should just double the amount of pots for this.

I like that you feel inspired to experiment as well. Maybe somebody else would like to join us? We can make it an all climate experiment.

Nynke

Ok here it goes. I made 8 pots. It wasn't hard, or time consuming. I never realized the paper is perforated. So we'll see if they stay together. Since the paper is long and narrow the folding method won't work. I used an empty soup can to roll the paper. Pushed the bottom around the bottom edge. I folded the top twice because one time didn't feel secure. I haven't filled them yet. Time will tell. I hope it works.

Update on the paper pot experiment

Type of pots:

From left to right:
1. Folded pot “with flaps” from first movie (double layer paper), posted by Megan Palmer
2. Same type of pot used half the paper (Single layer paper)
3. Folded pot from second movie, posted by Sarah Joubert
4. Same pot with thicker paper (the kind Jen Fulkerson used)
5. Newspaper wrapped around a jar
6. Toilet paper rolls (with sand in stead of soil)
7. “Soilblock” made like a sandcake but from soil (uncompressed)
8. Plastic pot for reference
9.     Direct Sowing

Making
Personally I think number 5, wrapping the newspaper around a jar, was unexpectedly difficult to make. I had to start all over a few times. For me it was not faster than the folding. To my own great surprise I could make pot type 3 and 4 faster than type 1 and 2.
Filling
When filling the pots, numbers 1 and 2 felt quite weak, because they have two thin sides and two much thicker sides and the flapps are in the way of filling. I had to act carrefully. Nothing wrong with that, but all other pots felt firmer.

Update on paper pot experiment (continued)

Set up
I wanted to make 8 pots of each, to divide them in two groups, one that I will harden off, and one that I won’t harden off. Of course things went different than I wanted: The paper for the thick paper pots had different dimensions. So I managed to make 2x four identical ones that I spread over the two groups. Probably not a big deal. (if you look well in the pictures above and below, you can see the difference).
 
The second thing that went “wrong” was germination of the bean seeds. I germinated them between two paper towels, to be sure that all pots had a germinating seed. However I needed 64 germinating seeds, but I did not reach that number. Therefore I had to add different bean seeds at a later time. I decided that this diverser group will be the one that I will plant outside without hardening off.

Update on paper pot experiment (continued)

Not hardening off
Which brings me to the third issue. What is hardening off? Or better, what is “not hardening off?”
Normally I take my trays outside as soon as the seeds unfold. When it is cold (at night) I keep the lid on, or put them back inside. I act depending on the weather. I live in an appartment building and my balcony is pretty sheltered. It seems really weird not to do this.
 
The plants I kept inside in my warm living room (where I started both groups), started to grow really fast and became leggy and started to fall over. Fungus appeared. I really did not know what to do with them. I am not supposed to do anything that would resemble hardening off. It is 6 weeks before my last frost date. If they grow any higher, I don’t even know how I will transport them to my garden (4km from my house) without damaging them.

Since keeping them inside would lead to no good at all, and the night temperatures are well above zero, I decided to plant them, assuming they would turn out to be snail fodder anyway. So straigth from the living room, strapped on my bicycle, towards the garden. And this is where the paper pots score much better than the plastic pots and the not so compacted soilblock. The last part of the road is pretty bumpy and the plastic pots started to “jump” and the soilblocks were shaken until they fall appart (except for one). The wind snapped some of the weak stems.  Normally I never transport them in this tray, this was the first time.

Planting
Upon arrival in my guarden, I immediately started planting. I planted them 4 in a row, than leave space for 4 identical pots that are still hardening off. Then the next 4 pots of a different type and so on. If less than 4 survived the trip, I still kept there place free, in order not to get confused later. I marked the end of each set of 4 with a stick.
I scooped them one by one up with a hand rake. The paper pots with the flaps have 2 strong sides and two weak ones. The number 2 pots, made from one layer of paper (half of what was instructed in the video), got damaged when I took their neigbours out. However, the soil held up well and remained square.
I sprinkeled ashes around the base of the plants to chase away the snails. I dusted the plants with rock dust, that makes them less tasty for slugs and snails. I really tried to give them the best start against all odds. I expected absolutely nothing from these pathethic, sad, misserable plants at all. I expected them to be eaten by slugs before I left for home. And HERE IT COMES: Maybe it is still to cold for slugs, but now, 2 weeks later, most of them are neither death nor eaten by slugs. They still look misserable, but one of them even shows a new leaf unfolding!

Update on paper pot experiment (continued)

Hardening off
In the mean time, the beans that are hardening off on the balcony, are looking a lot better (this picture is two weeks ago). The plants in the toilet paper rolls filled with sand (number 6), have dried out because of bad watering regime on my part. At this moment, the plants are almost the same size as the leggy ones I planted in the garden. So these were planted too early as well. I will try to wait one more week and when the weatherforcast promisses no freezing temperatures, I will plant these out 2 weeks before my last frost date, so still pretty harsh on beans.

The experiment is not completed yet. I will keep you informed.

I have to say that I like the number 3 so much that I have made 20 more and sowed some borlotti beans from the kitchen cabinet in it and a few more in pots and kept some behind for direct sowing. Maybe I can redo some of the “not hardening off” experiment.

Lessons learned so far:
• Don’t start your bean seeds to early (not again).
• Experiment! You can discover something new and be amazed.
• Paper pots hold better during transport (over bumpy roads)
• For beans, the toiletrolls filled with sand can not hold the moisture as well as any of the others.

Nynke Muller wrote:
Which brings me to the third issue. What is hardening off? Or better, what is “not hardening off?”
Normally I take my trays outside as soon as the seeds unfold. When it is cold (at night) I keep the lid on, or put them back inside. I act depending on the weather. I live in an appartment building and my balcony is pretty sheltered. It seems really weird not to do this.

Hardening off is the process of getting the plants used to being outside in normal weather and normal sunlight compared to the controlled space of the house or greenhouse. The common way is to put them outside a little at a time. Perhaps an hour the first day, then a little longer, then a little longer, until the plants are outside for the whole day. The theory is that the plants won't be quite as shocked compared to sticking them outside with no adjustment period (which could cause them to slow their growth for a while).

Some plants can handle this better than others. And it matters how different inside and outside are. The closer you replicate outside conditions inside... the less the plant has to adjust to. The greater the difference in light and temp between inside and outside, the greater the chance of shock, and the more reason to harden off slowly.