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Seedlings on the cheap!
Friday, 18 September 2009
My potted garden is expanding, and doing well.
I've started a little nursery indoors on the windowsills. Ideally, I'd like a house with a conservatory, but for now, while we're renting, the windowsills will have to do.
I've mainly been buying seeds instead of seedlings. Sometimes I buy seedlings, but usually seeds. Seeds are a lot cheaper, and it is worth the effort to raise them up from scratch.
To do it on the cheap, I re-use seedling trays and pots I already have. I've also been using cardboard egg cartons.
I chop the top off the egg cartons, and use the "tongue" of the carton to label the seedlings.
Then I sit the cartons in tupperware that I already own so that I don't get water running all over the windows when I water my babies, and find a sunny windowsill for them.
When the seedlings have grown enough to go outside, I'll take them out of the cartons, and compost the cardboard. The seedlings can go out into my big pots outside, and take their chance with the wild weather of Dunedin! Then the tupperware trays will be washed and re-used for the next batch of seedlings.
This is really doing things on the cheap - each seedling works out to no more than a few cents, and the containers cost me nothing!
My family and I are really looking forward to the summer harvest!
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Cluttercut - Be the change
3 comments:
Frugal food growing- nothing beats it! Seeds are definitely the way to go, much more economical and enormous choice.
If you can separate the egg carton when they are ready to plant on (should be easy when wet) you can leave them in the little cups- less root disturbance and it will rot quickly to allow more growth.
Good luck!
And seed saving, plus making your own seed raising mix, would be even more cost effective!! That's what we are aiming to get to...
I was trying egg cartons but found some of the seeds grew their roots into the cardboard. Not a problem if you do as MWL suggested and plant them out in the carton, but I ahd different seeds in each egg section, and would have had to cut them apart... next time I know better! I also used the top off the carton for the base (to preent water leaking everywhere) with a layer or two of cardboard from the recycling, as a 'liner'!
Hi Mountainwildlife - Frugal food growing is BRILLIANT!
But I keep looking at my 3 blueberry bushes, then consider the huge amount of blueberries we eat, and I can't help thinking I'm going to have to run a blueberry farm! So yummy!
The thing that is slowing us down in our house hunting is we want a house with a few acres, but want it close into town, and properties like that are hard to get.
Our goal is to be as sustainable as possible with our food, but there's no point doing that if our petrol bill skyrockets! :-( So we're taking our time and the house hunting saga goes on...and on...and on...We'll get there, eventually!
But frugality is great! The cheaper we live, the faster we save money, or get out of debt for those who have debt. All good.
Hi Dixiebelle - I've got to wait until my plants are old enough to produce seeds before we seed save, but that's a goal for us too :-)
I'm just going to plant them out in the carton, once they're big enough.
One issue I did find is I need to water them a bit more in egg cartons, because the cardboard soaks up some of the water too.
I just wish our morning frosts would be over. September 20 is our official last frost date, but we had a mild frost this morning too, so they're not quite over yet.
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