Do you feel like you’re throwing out tons of egg boxes each year? Fear not, there is a solution. Why not make compostable seed pots out of them? Compostable seed pots are small pots you can start seedlings in and when it’s time to move them on to a bigger pot or outside, you can plant the whole compostable pot instead of disturbing the plants’ roots trying to transplant them. The plant will be happy and your empty egg boxes will be put to good use.
MATERIALS & TOOLS REQUIRED
Materials
- Empty egg boxes
- Compost
- Plant seeds
Tools
- Scissors
STEP 1: SPLIT THE BOX INTO SMALL ‘ALMOST’ POTS
The first step is to cut the box to separate each bit that holds an egg. They won’t exactly look like pots just yet but don’t worry. First, cut the lid off and cut the egg box in half.
The next step is to cut the long center pieces sticking up and to split the box further so that each egg holder is it’s own little ‘pot’.
STEP 2: CREATE POT SIDES
As you see now, the pots aren’t going to be any good because the sides are missing and all the compost would just fall straight out. To fix this, we need to create some sides. For this we can use those center pieces we just cut off along with some of the box lid.
First, cut a strip off the box lid.
Next cut it into trapezoid-type shapes, like so.
STEP 3: ASSEMBLE THE POTS
To make actual pots, we need to block up the gaps in the pot sides with the trapezoid shapes and the center pieces we cut off earlier.
Simply cut off the x2 bottom corners of the trapezoid and fold the sides to make them curve so that they cat be fit inside the pots nicely. The shape is almost like a paper airplane.
Now slot these and the center pieces we cut off inside the pots to block up the gaps like so. The corner egg pots will need only x2 of the shapes while the ones cut from the middle will need x3.
STEP 4: FILL THE POTS WITH COMPOST AND PLANT YOUR SEEDS
That’s it, the pots are ready for planting! Because no glue is used to hold the pieces inside, they are very delicate so handle them with care. I used a tablespoon to scoop compost into each one and pop a couple of small pepper seeds in.
Sometime later you should have baby plants on the way.
TIPS
This was my first attempt at making these and I think there are a few things that can be done to improve them when building but also generally when caring for these seeds. Here they are:
- Try using non toxic glue to seal the gaps. This will help them hold shape when being handled. It will also help the water to stay in the pot. With the current design, if you pour water on top, it likes to leak out of the sides between the gaps and patches we placed to cover the gaps. This means that the soil at the bottom in the center doesn’t get sufficiently wet.
- Water the pots using a spray bottle. This solved the leaky water problem above.
- Do not plant any long root seedlings in these as the pots are quite small. I’m talking about things such as sweetcorn that grow long roots quickly – I don’t think they will do too well in such a confined space.
- Use the finest compost you can find. The multi-purpose compost I used had quite a few bigger twigs and bits which didn’t work well in small pots like this. The seeds kept floating to the top because the compost was too bitsy and loose around them.
