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Improvising with household items - egg boxes

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  • GemmaJFGemmaJF Posts: 2,286
    Mary370 said:
    @GemmaJF they're great for planting seeds in..........
    No doubt! I have the same plastic pots I use over and over, so never tried to grow in them. They make good pen tidies and things to put loose nails and stuff in too!
  • TopbirdTopbird Posts: 8,355
    @joannekentsmith
    Yes, you can use cardboard egg cartons as seed trays but they soften and start to disintegrate after a week or two.
    If you decide to use them try to find a supporting plastic tray to keep them in.

    Other things you can use in place of the glass / propagator lid are - cling film (see Mary's suggestion, or pop the tray in a clear plastic bag (you can wash it and reuse it afterwards), or repurpose plastic trays supplied with some supermarket fruit & veg as a plastic lid.
    Heaven is ... sitting in the garden with a G&T and a cat while watching the sun go down
  • DovefromaboveDovefromabove Posts: 88,147
    I make scoops out of milk bottles for the bird food and use yoghurt/cream  pots to scoop out the hedgehog food. 

    Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.





  • Nanny BeachNanny Beach Posts: 8,719
    They are such big seeds I dont bother putting them in individual modules, last year I just put them on half seed trays. Sowed half a dozen different types of flower seeds today, the Lemonade cosmos, says you can sow outside in April, THEN says keep at 18-25, would like to know how that could be acomplished!!
  • Butterfly66Butterfly66 Posts: 970
    I grow cosmos every year and don’t bother with a propagator, real or improvised. I usually sow them around the last week of March and keep them in the (unseated) greenhouse from day one. They always come up very quickly. 
    I don’t start any seeds off in the house as we don’t really have the space/light.
     If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need.”—Marcus Tullius Cicero
    East facing, top of a hill clay-loam, cultivated for centuries (7 years by me). Birmingham
  • Butterfly66Butterfly66 Posts: 970
    edited April 2020
    Also meant to add that I do my Zinnia seeds in a normal seed tray as well not separate cells.
     If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need.”—Marcus Tullius Cicero
    East facing, top of a hill clay-loam, cultivated for centuries (7 years by me). Birmingham
  • Thank you everyone for your advice and ideas, I was amazed how quickly I could find and reuse clear plastic food trays as lids to butter and yogurt pots etc. Great improvisation and I'm enjoying the planting. 
    Best wishes
    Joanne
  • B3B3 Posts: 27,505
    My best one contained some kind of fruit. It has a hinged lid with ventilation holes and has little studs to close it. It makes a great miniature greenhouse.
    Also, the other day, I bought some plants in Aldi. The containers were in the shape of little houses with a four module tray on top of a thick layer of water retaining gel inside. I will definitely use those. Worth buying the plants for the containers!
    In London. Keen but lazy.
  • josusa47josusa47 Posts: 3,530
    In this long, dry spell, I'm struggling to find enough gazunders.  Yesterday I gave all my pots of cuttings and seedlings and rescued plants a plunge, and all manner of stuff was pressed into service to stand them in:  dinner trays, tops of large screw-top jars, supermarket mushroom trays, paint roller trays, office in-trays, and a plastic crate lined with plastic bags.
  • B3B3 Posts: 27,505
    Salad drawers from old fridges make good cloches.
    In London. Keen but lazy.
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