Making Pots for Seedlings

When I tried to pot seedlings last year I used peat pots that I bought at Lowe's. While starting plants from seed is less expensive than buying plants, the pots do start to add up in cost and some pots were really too small for starting things like peppers and eggplants or other things that you need to use a larger sized pot. I had read several articles and looked at some DIY Videos about making pots from newspaper. Some people do an origami-like approach making square pots. However the easiest is the kind where you take a single piece of newspaper, fold it in thirds, wrap it around a glass or can and then crimp the ends into the open end. Slip it off and then smash down the insides, then fill this with potting soil and you are ready to go.

Here is a newspaper pot with some cabbage seedlings.

Grow Lights

Last year I tried to pot seedlings with some modest success. Seeds are relatively cheap and buying seedlings can be pretty expensive- $1-2 for 6 and you can only buy the variety or types of plants that are available in your local store. I realized that last year my problem starting seedlings was not enough light. I read up on this in a number of books and internet sites. It turns out there are lots of sites on the internet about making grow lights. For my Christmas present, my son helped me make a grow lights stand. We went to Lowe's and got a set of shelving for about $50 and two sets of florescent light fixtures. Cool white light has a sun-like spectrum. We hung them from the underside of the wooden top shelf and I have a nice setup to store my gardening supplies and grown my own seedlings. A timer turns the lights on for 14 hours a day.




I am starting out with cabbage seedlings and will add other plants over the next few weeks. I will show you how I made pots from newspaper and the baby lettuce greens I am growing over the next few days.

What I Hope to Do

Last year was my most successful garden for years and certainly my most organic. Once things got started we had a plethora of vegetables and fruits and for many months every meal contained two or three foods from the front yard of our suburban Birmingham home. Marci has agree to a modest expansion and so this year we will have about twice as much space.

This year I want to build on that success:
1) Grow more types, better quality food and have an all season garden right through the fall and winter too.
2) Grow enough food that the calories would feed at least one adult.

The goal isn't to produce all of the food that we eat, but to produce enough food that the calories in the food would be enough to support us. I hope to share food with friends and family like I did last year.

One Kilogram of vegetable or fruit contains 4000 calories.
If you allow 2000 calories a day per person, then to take into account peeling and processing, you would need 225 kilograms or 500 lbs of food to support a person for a year.

My stretch goal this year then is to grow 500 lbs of food in my front yard in 2010.

I will share my experiences, both good and bad, on this blog. If you have some good advice or ideas on how to improve my suburban garden or want to share your experience join with me on the blog.

Suburban Farmer Amos