for the love of plastic containers

Taking my cue from Emms I too decided to get my kitchen garden up and running this week.

I bought a bag of compost from B&Q for £1 !! and managed to fit it in one of my material bags to get it hame on the bus!!! Genius if I do say so myself! So off I set to prepare my containers and seeds.

I used some pots left over from last year and some plastic I have been collecting from all sorts of places including the see through tubes used to contain the many christmas fairy lights I bought last year. I just new they would come in handy! For the rest of my pots I have used some plastic cups however I have found plastic containers  used to hold clothes washing liquitabs are perfect for covering seedlings too once they have been cleaned out and the lables taken off!

The most perfect thing I have found so far this year for containing seeds is the packaging used to hold ready made profiteroles! It has so far proven perfect for carrots!!!!

Wash out the packaging then with a sharp knife carefully stab the bottom tray to give some drainage holes.

Now take  four toilet roll tubes, cut them in half and sit them in the groves of the tray. Fill each tube halfway up with soil/compost, give the soil a gentle water. Now take your seeds and plant one to two seeds in each of the tubes, cover with another layer of soil and gently pat down.

 

Now place the plastic see through lid back on to the base tray and there you have it a compact mini greenhouse for carrots! A good thing to note is to give the seedings a bit of air every couple of days so just remove the lid and let them sit for a few hours. I have found that this helps to pevent too much moisture building up and causing a sort of  mould!!!

When you need to transplant them once the seedling has begun to grow you can just pick out each tube and replant where necessary without destroying the roots of the plant!

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