Lockdown Gardening - Making Plantpots Out of Plastic Bottles

Our seedlings did really well (better than expected!) in our tiny dipping sauce containers, see earlier post Lockdown Gardening - Using Dipping Sauce Containers to Plant Seeds. Now they need a bigger pot. I haven't been out to buy any new containers for them yet. I'm still only going out if I really have to and I'm also trying to spend as little money as possible! 

If I venture as far as the recently reopened garden centre I know I will get carried away a spend a fortune. As a family we, like many others, are unsure as to what our income will be in the next few months. We've been meal planning and sticking to a budget since the lockdown began so I'm trying to continue in the spirit of keeping spending to a minimum and making the most of what we've got and recycling as much as possible. 

The sauce seed pots didn't cost a penny so I'm trying to carry that on to the next stage of my little plants' development. After looking at various options I decided on cutting up a plastic drinks bottle and using the bottom. 

It was easy to cut to the right size and add good sized holes to the bottom for drainage. The size should keep these plants happy for a little while during their next stage of development. 

I simply tapped the bottom of the sauce container to remove the seedling and soil.

And then transferred it, soil and all, to its new, soil filled container.

A little extra water and it's ready to keep on growing.

A couple of weeks on the windowsill and spells outside on very warm sunny days and it's thriving.

You Don't Need Packs of Seeds, Save Them When Cooking!

Although I'd bought a few packs of 99p seeds before the lockdown began, I also started noticing them more and more whilst chopping up fruit to eat.

We always have fresh tomatoes in the house so I thought they would be the easiest to experiment with. 

 

I simply scooped out the seeds from a couple of plum tomatoes and placed them on to a piece of kitchen paper, where I also wrote on what they were. 

I then placed the kitchen paper holding the seeds in an empty plastic container. A takeaway container from the days when we had a weekly Friday night treat! Oh, how I miss those days! These were the perfect size and I could use the lid to make a makeshift mini greenhouse and keep them warm. Any other container covered with clingfilm to cover would do.

I added some water to the seeds so the paper was wet, but not so much it would be dripping.

Then I popped the lid on and put them in a warm place in the kitchen.

I left them to see if they would show signs of germination. It took a couple of days for the tomato seeds to germinate. You can just about see the little white shoots appearing in the photograph.

I then chose the best four seeds (running out of room to grow more!) and transferred them into the little pots and covered them with some compost mentioned in the earlier post Lockdown Gardening - Using Dipping Sauce Containers to Plant Seeds to

 carry on growing.

I'm really enjoying experimenting with gardening and also teaching my children (and myself!) about where the food we eat comes from and how wonderful nature is.

After another two or three days, they've started to grow. I'm not sure how they'll do in the long run but having taken less than a week to get to this stage it's a fun little project to give the children an interest in gardening. And didn't cost a thing! 

Lockdown Gardening - Using Dipping Sauce Containers to Plant Seeds

Before the country went into lockdown I bought some packets of seeds to keep the children occupied with a bit of gardening. 

We had a shortage of plantpots or containers suitable for germinating seeds so we improvised with a plastic take away container, some individual sauce containers and clingfilm.

We seemed to accumulate these little pots of dipping sauce back in the days when we had a Macdonald's Drive-Thru and were given more sauce than we needed. 

Any unopened pots ended up in our fridge and eventually used up on homemade burgers, nuggets or fries. After finally using the little pots of sauce up when we ran out of ketchup and the like during lockdown we were left with lots of empty little containers.  

After washing them with the intention of keeping them for potential craft projects I decided to use them as a good solution to grow individual seedlings. With the pots being so small, I was also able to make what limited soil I had spread a long way. 

I pierced some small holes in the bottom for drainage.

They were also easy to write on with a Sharpie marker so we could see what we had planted in each one.

Once filled with soil, the seeds planted and given a little water, they fitted neatly in a plastic takeaway container.

I then covered the container with clingfilm and placed on our kitchen windowsill to keep nice and warm.

The children were so excited when our little plants started to sprout after about a week. Now all we have to do is simply tap out and remove the seedling and soil and transfer to a bigger container.

The little pots can then be rinsed and reused to grow more seedlings. 

Using these little containers saved lots of space and helped ration our limited supply of soil really well.