DIY Seed Pots from Household Waste

You almost certainly throw away enough free seed pots every week to fill a windowsill. Toilet roll tubes, the back page of yesterday's newspaper, egg boxes, yoghurt pots and the tray your mushrooms came in are all perfectly good sowing containers — you just have to look at them differently. Before you spend a penny on plastic modules, raid the recycling.

This guide runs through the best household items to sow into, how to prepare each one, and which crops actually suit which pot. It is part of our wider guide to reusing and recycling in the garden, and it pairs neatly with making your own homemade plant feeds and your own compost so that your whole sowing setup costs next to nothing.

The honest catch with home-made pots is that most of them dry out faster than a shop-bought plastic module and some are fiddly to make. None of that matters much if you know which to use and when — so we will be clear about the trade-offs as we go.

Toilet and kitchen roll tubes

Cardboard tubes are the star of the recycling box. Their tall, narrow shape gives roots room to go straight down, which is exactly what deep-rooted seedlings want, and the whole tube can be planted out so the roots are never disturbed.

To use a toilet roll tube whole, stand it on end in a tray, packed snugly against its neighbours so they hold each other upright. Fill with seed or multipurpose compost, firm gently, water, and sow. For a flatter base that holds compost better, make four short cuts up from one end and fold the flaps in like a cardboard box — no tape needed.

Kitchen roll tubes are longer, so cut each one in half to make two pots, or leave them full length for the deepest-rooting crops. When the seedling is ready, plant the entire tube into its final hole and bury the rim. The cardboard rots down within a few weeks and the roots grow straight through it.

The one weakness of cardboard tubes is that they wick moisture and can grow a little mould in a humid propagator. Keep them in good light with some air movement and they will be fine for the few weeks you need them.

Newspaper pots

A rolled newspaper pot costs nothing, plants whole, and is genuinely satisfying to make. You do not need a shop-bought "paper potter" gadget — a straight-sided jar or tin is all it takes.

Here is the method:

1. Tear or cut a sheet of newspaper into strips roughly 10cm deep (the height of your jar plus a bit over).
2. Lay the jar on its side at one end of a strip and roll the paper around it, leaving about 3–4cm of paper overhanging the base of the jar.
3. Tuck and fold that overhang in across the bottom of the jar to form the base of the pot.
4. Stand the jar upright and press down firmly to crease the base, then slide the jar out.

Stand the finished pots shoulder to shoulder in a tray so they support each other — they soften once watered. Use newspaper printed with soy-based inks (most UK newsprint now is) and avoid glossy magazine pages, which do not break down and may carry less friendly inks.

Newspaper pots are biodegradable, so plant them out whole. They suit fast crops and anything you would rather not root-disturb. Their downside is that they dry out quickly and go floppy, so they are best for seedlings that will only be in the pot for a few weeks.

Egg boxes

A cardboard egg box is a ready-made tray of twelve small modules. The cells are shallow, so they only suit crops that germinate and grow on fast before they need more root room — but for those, they are excellent.

Fill each cell with compost, sow, and stand the box in a shallow tray to catch drips. Cress, salad leaves, lettuce for pricking out, and quick brassicas all do well. When seedlings are ready, tear off individual cells and plant the whole cardboard cell — the roots grow through and it rots away.

Plastic egg boxes work too, but they are not biodegradable — treat them like any reusable plastic module and tip seedlings out to plant. The clear lidded ones make a passable miniature propagator for a single sowing.

Yoghurt pots, mushroom trays and takeaway tubs

Rigid plastic food packaging is the closest free substitute for shop-bought pots, and it lasts for years. The only job is drainage: poke or drill three or four holes in the base of anything that does not have them, or seedlings will sit in water and rot.

Good candidates from a UK kitchen:

• Yoghurt and cream pots — single deep modules, ideal for potting on one seedling.
• Mushroom trays and fruit punnets — shallow seed trays for scattering small seed, often with drainage holes already in.
• Takeaway and margarine tubs — wide, low trays for cut-and-come-again salad or for starting a batch of seed.
• Clear ready-meal and salad boxes — the lidded ones make instant mini-propagators that hold humidity for germination.

Because these are not biodegradable, you tip the seedling out to transplant rather than planting the pot — so use them for crops that do not mind a little root handling. Give everything a wash first.

Citrus halves and eggshells

These two are more craft project than serious growing, but they are fun and worth a mention — especially with children.

A scooped-out orange, lemon or grapefruit half makes a charming little biodegradable pot. Add a small drainage slit, fill with compost, and sow. The theory is that you plant the whole thing and the peel rots down. In practice citrus peel is slow to break down and can go mouldy, so treat these as a short-term novelty for a quick crop like cress rather than a reliable module.

Eggshells are the classic windowsill gimmick: half a rinsed shell sitting in the egg box, filled with a thimble of compost and a few seeds. They look lovely and children adore them, but be realistic about their limits. The shell holds barely any compost, so it dries out within hours and roots fill it almost immediately — you will be transplanting within a week or two.

Which crops suit which pot

Match the pot to the crop and you avoid most problems. The key questions are how deep the roots go and whether the crop minds being disturbed.

As a rule, the plant-whole, biodegradable pots (tubes, newspaper, egg cells) are for crops that resent root disturbance — beans, peas, squash, sweetcorn and sweet peas. The reusable plastic containers are for crops you are happy to tip out and transplant, or for pricking seedlings on into a bigger home.

Practical tips

Label everything. It is astonishing how alike two seedlings look at the two-leaf stage. Cut lolly sticks, broken plant labels, or strips of an old yoghurt pot written on in pencil all work. Pencil does not fade in sunlight the way many pens do.

Sort out drainage. Biodegradable pots drain freely; reused plastic needs holes. No drainage means waterlogged compost and rotted seedlings.

Stand pots close together. Cardboard tubes, newspaper pots and egg cells all lean and slump on their own. Packed snugly in a tray they hold each other upright and dry out a touch more slowly.

Bury the rim when planting out. Any biodegradable pot left poking above the soil acts like a wick, drawing water away from the roots and drying the rootball out. Tear or fold down the top edge and make sure the whole pot is below the surface.

Harden off before planting out. Seedlings raised on a warm windowsill need a week or so of gradual acclimatisation to outdoor conditions before they go out for good — a step covered in our guide to starting a vegetable garden. Use our planting calendar to time your sowing so seedlings are ready to go out after the UK's last frosts, rather than getting leggy and pot-bound on the sill.

A handful of useful odds and ends do justify a small spend — a propagator lid or a decent dibber, for instance — and there is no harm in a few proper modules for crops you sow every year. But for the bulk of your spring sowing, the recycling box has you covered.

Once your free seedlings are up and growing, keep the thrifty habit going: feed them with home-made comfrey or nettle tea, pot them on into upcycled containers, and read the reuse and recycle cornerstone for the full picture of growing more for less. For more ideas on what to do with the rest of your household waste, our getting started hub is the place to begin.