Make Recycled Newspaper Pots — The Human Nature Center

With these recycled newspaper pots, you can start your own seeds for food, flowers, or herbs using materials you have at home. You can plant these pots right in the ground when the seedling is ready, since newspaper is biodegradable and it feeds our friends, the worms! Here’s what you need to get started:

MATERIALS

a sheet of newspaper
soil
a spoon
scissors
seeds
a thick stick, blender tamper, or the handle of your shovel
optional: an empty berry basket

DIRECTIONS

Place your cardboard roll on the newspaper with a couple inches of the cardboard roll sticking out from one end.

Roll the newspaper around the roll tightly. There should be a couple inches of newspaper sticking out from the other end.

With one hand holding the seam of the newspaper around the cardboard roll, use your fingers to push and mash the open end of newspaper down around the bottom of the roll.

Use a thick wooden stick or blender tamper to tamp down the bottom of the newspaper through the roll to “lock” the newspaper pot bottom.

Pull the newspaper pot gently off the cardboard roll.

Plant seeds in pots:

Use spoons to fill newspaper pot with soil up to about 1/2” below the top of the pot.
Gently press a dent into the soil about twice the length of the seed (deeper for larger seeds)

Place seed in the dent, then cover with soil.

Water gently with a few squirts of the spray bottle on mist setting.

TIP: Sometimes newspaper pots can be a bit tippy. We like to nestle a few at a time inside of a used strawberry basket to keep them steady during watering and care.

CARE:

Put your plant in a sunny window. Give it a little water every day. Watch it grow. You can plant your seedling outside in its newspaper pot directly in a garden bed or planter when it is a couple of inches tall.