Seed Pots From Phone Books

This was going to be all about recycling/reusing phone books. After a few days of internet research, I came across the seed pot idea. I decided that, since it is seed buying and indoor seeding time, I would focus on seed pots.

As for the poor phone book, you can use it for anything you use newspaper for. For tougher things I suggest doubling up. My daughter uses our big one as a booster seat while she’s on the computer. You can tear the pages out and use them for window and mirror cleaning with your home-made cleaners. The pages can be used as kindling, padding, and stuffing for dog toys. There’s also the chance to teach yourself paper mache. You can click here for a blog all about phone book repurposing.

I also found instructions for an earwig trap. Take a page or three, roll them up, wet them down a little and place them near the last place you saw earwigs. After a day or two, unroll your trap and shake the little beasties into a bucket of lightly soapy water thereby doing away with them. Once they are all dead, just dump your bucket in your compost pile.

Now, back to the seed pots. Of all the ways I found to make them, I’ve narrowed it down to three that seem to work best. Two of them are square variations of the origami box and one is round and very simple. I tried making pot number two and taking pictures but it just didn’t work out since I had to do it all one handed. I am going to be using the round one (pot number one) myself just because it’s the easiest. For all the pots, I used two pages together.

1.   The seed pot I’ll be showing you how to make. You can use this link or my instructions.  ~ http://bonzaiaphrodite.com/2009/03/how-to-make-newspaper-seed-pots

2.   An original origami box. You will need to make your page into a square by removing a bit off the top or bottom of the page. I saved this strip and folded it into the bottom to add a little bit of strength.  ~ http://www.origami-instructions.com/origami-box.html

3.   I skipped step #9 for this one because the pages of a phone book are smaller than the newspaper and the pot ended up a bit too small for my likes. ~ http://www.forgreenies.com/origami-newspaper-seedling-pots

Here are all three pots in the order they are listed above:

Here are my instructions for pot number one.

Step one ~ take two pages and fold one long edge down about an inch two times.

Step two ~ place your soup can on the paper so that about an inch of your can is off the top folded edge and roll it up.

Step three ~ pick up the can while you’re holding tight to the seam.

Step four ~ fold the paper edge in to the bottom of the can and then fold the rest down.

Step five ~ remove the can carefully as sometimes the seam of the can gets caught on the fold in the paper.

Step six ~ insert the upper inside edge under the one inch flap on the outside edge.

Step seven ~ tightly pinch bottom edge all around so that it stays folded in.

Step eight ~ turn your completed seed pot over and place a little soil in the bottom to make sure the seam is going to hold.

Step nine ~ finish filling it up with soil to the bottom of the inner fold.

You’re all set! Plant your seeds, water, and watch the miracle of growing your own food!

Here are all the pots before and after slightly over saturation to test how well they do. Pot number one was so much easier and stronger that I almost decided not to include the others in this post but I wanted to give you a few options so they stayed.

    

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