It all started with a bottle.
I didn’t want to throw it away but I didn’t want to spend hours trying to find a local place that still accepts recyclable plastic either. Sadly, living in the south there aren’t as many viable options for such things. Then, just this morning over coffee, JB began suggesting ideas for how to reuse the bottles when I remembered my friend Chris McLaughlin’s contribution to my book. She transformed a 2-liter plastic bottle into a terrarium project to do with kids.
The idea coincided perfectly with another conundrum I’d been battling with recently – how to start seeds when your inside temperature doesn’t stay constant or warm enough to generally germinate a seed. Being frugal types, we keep the thermostat set in the low to mid-sixties during winter.
I knew what I had to do and I got started right away.
With nothing more than a sharp blade I was able to cut a 20 ounce bottle into a tiny makeshift terrarium that is perfectly suited to start a few seeds in a sunny window.
I carefully cut away the center section of the bottle leaving just enough of the oversized upper portion so that it would easily slide down over the lower portion.
I set aside the center piece to figure out some use for later.
That is really all it took to create the tiny terrarium container, now I get to move on to the thing I have been looking forward to the most since the first frost – planting seeds!
At this point all I had to do was add seed starting medium to the lower portion of the terrarium, then I created small indentations in the medium using a chopstick (a pencil works just as well).
I placed a seed into each of the four indentations and lightly covered them with the seed starting medium.
Finally, place the upper half on the lower half.
Wow, that was hard.
If you want to get fancy (or just remember what the heck you planted), affix labels to your tiny terrarium that lists the seed you started and the date. This will help you to keep up with what you planted and when and if you are anything like me that is a very important step to take otherwise you will have a garden full of 10 varieties of tomatoes without the first inkling as to which one is which.
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
Fascinating. I’ll be curious to see how this progresses!
I also do this but you just gotta transplant the seedlings before the roots get attached to the plastic itself. It is not too much of an issue but it takes a little work.
I moved on to using small papercups I had lying around the house and then put them inside of these bottoms. This makes it easier for up-potting.
Luis
Great idea, I’ve used it myself in the past. Building on from Luis’ post, you could use the paper pots you have shown on the starting tomato page and put those into larger 2 litre bottles (sorry, not sure what that works out to in ounces) to get your tomatoes seeding in the cold of winter! For smaller seedlings, you can cut up an egg carton and use each of the egg “holders” as a seed starter which would fit into the smaller plastic bottles and avoid the roots sticking to the plastic.
Used this method to start my seeds that are going to be transplanted into a large terrarium….WORKED GREAT! Package for the seeds said 14 days until I would see any growth…had 2 inch tall sprouts in less than 10 days….WOW! Thanks for the great tip…will definitely be using this in the future!
{ 2 trackbacks }