A Year of Food-Growing Possibility (and making toilet paper roll seed starters)
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As I write this the calendar is declaring it the first day of spring. This marks the beginning of our growing season, the first in five years that I have not been either pregnant or chasing around a baby or toddler. Don’t get me wrong, I would welcome either scenario, but this year it appears I will be growing food, not babies.
In years past the papa has been head gardener and I have been head cook and preservationist, with us often crossing over with babies on our back to complete both tasks.
This year is different in so many ways and holds so many possibilities, all of which I can’t quite share yet. As such the papa has a lot of things on his plate and on his mind, so I have volunteered the boys and I to take over garden planning, planting, and care.
We kicked things off this past week by starting seeds indoors in reused seed trays and toilet paper roll seed cups. Here’s how we did it.
Making Toilet Paper Roll Seed Planters
1. Take your toilet paper roll and smash it down flat. Rotate it halfway and smash it flat again so that you have created a square with four seams, like this:
2. Cut the roll in half, creating two rolls 2-3 inches high.
3. Employ the nearest cutie pie to man the child-safe scissors in an unwieldy fashion. On one end of your now shorter toilet paper roll halves snip between 1/4 and 1/2 inch up all four seams. You should end up with something like this:
4. Fold the snipped seams over like you would a card board box, tucking one end in to secure the bottom. They don’t sit very flat until they are filled with soil, so don’t fret. Place them all in a tray that can catch water, fill with soil, and plant away.
5. Forget to take a photo of the planted toilet paper rolls and take a photo of the seed trays being watered instead. You need to make dinner.
This is my first year using toilet paper rolls as seed cups, but I am told that you can plant the whole thing right into the ground by unfolding the bottom and being sure to that the edge of the cup is below the soil line.
We started just under 40 onions, 18 spinach, 18 lettuce, 18 parsley, and 18 cilantro plants. Last week we also prepared 4 of our beds for early plants. This week I need to start a lot more seeds and once the cold snap we’re about to get is over I will plant peas, lettuce, spinach, onions, beets, and carrots straight into the soil.
Have you started planting and have you ever tried the toilet paper roll planters?
love those toilet seed planters, haven’t used them but they are so adorable.
Renee – Aren’t they?
Thanks for this! Each year I’ve gardened I’ve accumulated ways to save money on growing food, and this is yet another great idea to add to my collection- I’m also going to attempt to save seeds this year, although I find the task daunting because of the possibilities of cross breeding and that affecting the quality of the next year’s crop- I don’t want to spend time saving the seeds and then growing them the next season only to find I have some weird crossbreed or that they were the seeds of some hybrid that produces poor producing offspring. I guess that’s what I’ll be researching this summer when I’m NOT working in the garden:) But while it’s still a lot less than I spent on my container garden AND a lot less than I spent on buying started plants, I still hated to spend so much on seed starting materials- this is one less thing I need to buy next year!
Other money saving things I’ve done so far- used egg cartons (the papery ones, not styrofoam) for starting seeds, designing my own irrigation system (and we’ll see if it actually works OR saves me money), and saved milk jugs (with the help of my sister in law, whose household drinks much more milk than we do) to use as hot caps for my heat loving plants. Things I still want to do- find a cost effective way to build a hoop house, build a better and higher volume composting system, convert an old fish tank into a compost tea aerator, and propogate my two grape vines to expand into a little mini-vineyard. I’m heartened by the fact that spring is right around the corner, but I have SOOO much work to do I wish it would just get here already!
Brandis – Great tips and thoughts. It sounds like you are way ahead of us. We built a super simple a-frame hoop house out of plastic and scrap wood for around $30, which covered about 4 3×6 beds of spinach, kale, and herbs. We have saved seeds from some locally purchased tomatoes and squash and had success with those without knowing any of the specifiics of what you are supposed to do :).
We are just getting our garden going and today we did this as our project in homeschool. My 9 year old loved the idea so thank you from him and I!
Mia – Great! It’s such a good activity for littles, isn’t it?
Awesome idea…next year I’ll have to remember to “save up” for it! Toilet paper rolls are also recommended as cutworm collars, so these would serve double duty for that with no extra work! (Cutworms are my arch-nemesis in the garden.)
Brittany – Which plants do you have trouble with cutworms on? (I am not familiar with organic pest control or the pests themselves yet :)).
So clever! Love it. Question though, I see you’re growing spinach. I have unsuccessfully (indoor) started mine twice. Do you have any tips to ensure success? So far I’ve watched them grow to about 11/2 inches tall, split into two leaves at the top, and then droop and die. They are very spindly as well. I so want to grow spinach since it’s something that can be frozen for future use. PLease help.
Laurie – I am sorry, but I am not experienced enough to answer your question. This is our first year starting spinach indoors and they have actually yet to sprout, so we shall see if any of them are successful. Because we get terrible lighting in our home I am planning on planting them very soon after they germinate. I do know that spinach is very cold-tolerant, for the most part, so I will be planting straight into the soil in the next week or two to get it started and I think most people do start it directly in the soil.
@Laurie, The spindly-ness is probably lack of light. The sudden wilt / die is called “damping off”. It is a fungal infection usually caused by overwatering. Try watering less, providing better air circulation, and maybe using a seed starting medium that has some sand or perlite for better drainage.
So far this year we have planted in the garden – broccoli, Chinese cabbage, red cabbage, and lettuce, along with snap peas and spinach seeds. I used to grow a lot of our plants from seed, but with four kids in 7 years, that fell by the wayside. I also tried winter sowing and didn’t have much success with it, but I want to try it again.
I haven’t heard of using toilet paper rolls which is a great way to recycle them!
What a neat idea! I can’t wait until I live in a place with room for a garden! 🙂
Even though I have not gotten into gardening yet, I aspire to.
What a great idea! This would be a fun project for our almost 3 year-old daughter to do. Thanks for sharing!
http://faithfulsolutions.blogspot.com/
Thanks so much for the tutorial! I am trying my brown thumb at another veggie garden this year. I have always wanted to start from seed but have never done it.
Sarah – I’m not much of a green thumb either. Killed two cactus plants in college.
We haven’t tried the toilet paper tube pots, but it looks like a neat thing to try, maybe next year.
We have started planting, though. The first plants went out about 3 weeks ago: lettuces, cabbage, kohlrabi, brussel sprouts, three cherry tomato plants (under Wall O’Waters) and sugar snap seeds were planted as well. This past week we set out some yellow squash, another round of lettuce, carrots, and spinach. We also went ahead and planted our first round of corn…too early, but we’ll cover it if we get a late frost. Our “last frost” date is only 2.5 weeks off anyway.
Toilet paper rolls work great. I haven’t done the fancy step of making a bottom to them in the past, just put them on a tray, but that will make it easier. Just like those peat pots at the big box home improvement store, plop them in the ground and the cardboard will compost over the summer. I’ve done a wide range of seedlings in that set up over the years. A great consumer conscious choice.
On the spinach question, you are right… they should just be planted directly into the soil. Like a number of other plants, they don’t transplant well. Because they are cool weather plants, you can get them in the ground now/soon and have an early harvest before the weather makes them bolt.
How big is your garden to grow enough food for your family. I have a small one and my husbank does not want me to expand and dig into more of the yard. I am trying to be creative and sneak veggie plants into the landscape. Any ideas anyone? Are their better veggies to plant in pots that I could put onto the deck? Thanks and I really enjoy your blog!
I’m looking forward to planting started seeds in the ground – if I can ever get my planned garden spot tilled, that is! I started seeds in compostable egg cartons with store-bought seed starting medium; even after getting knocked over by the wind when they were hardening off on the porch, all my seeds have sprouted and are doing well. (My spring peas are already 4″ tall!) There’s been so much rain lately, though, I can’t till the garden and direct-sow the rest of my plants! I’ve been offered help from a friend of mine (and her free teenage laborers) to keep the garden in exchange for some of the produce. I’m hoping the intensive-successive plan I have worked up is successful!
Regina – the comment-reply won’t work for me, so I’ll just say here: many edibles are more than pretty enough to landscape with. My mother uses kale in all kinds of colors to make borders, nasturtiums and sweet pea for florals and companion plants to attract pollinators. If you can’t grow out, grow up! Many of your vining crops will happily go up a trellis or cage, and there are several varietals of beans, tomatoes and all else that produce in a bush and/or dwarf variety rather than their determinate parents. What all would you like to plant in addition to what you have? How much space? Do you use square-foot or intensive gardening?
The toilet paper seed starters sound wonderful. I just used up most of ours organizing the mass of cords that my husband saves for his computer things, so I won’t get to use many little pots. This year I’m trying straw bale gardening, to enrich our clay soil. You might like to check into that.