Paper Potter

The Paper Potter is an excellent frugal and ecological way to recycle your paper while starting off your crops.

The last time I needed some pots I went on eBay and bought a stack of 100 for some stupidly low price. They arrived quickly, were exactly as described, and were perfect for starting off the beetroot, broccoli and sprouts. But that was before the Paper Potter.

I’d toyed with buying one, but then was given one for Christmas, and with January being the month for seeding your broad beans we used it for the first time this weekend.

The idea is ridiculously simple. You cut 8cm wide strips from your paper, running across the whole width of a spread of two pages. The size of your paper doesn’t really matter, as you only need 50cm length or so, and pretty much any paper could give you that.

You roll the strips around the straight cylinder of the dobber bit, fold in the ends and then press it onto the base, which pushes the folds up inside the cylinder. This is enough to hold it all together, allowing you to slip it off the dobber and stand it up as a perfect paper pot.

The best thing, though, is that when your seeds have started to sprout and they’re ready for transplanting into the garden, you don’t even have to take them out of the pots. You simply slip it into your trowelled-out hole and the paper decomposes over time.

Paper plant pots

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garden, growing+your+own, paper+potter, greenhouse, self+sufficiency

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1. Transplanting seedlings
2. We’ve started planting this year’s seeds
3. Paper bedding for the chickens