With the advent of the new calendar year, every fan of growing vegetables in his own garden is again concerned about finding containers for sowing. Almost all gardeners have abandoned the habit of growing seedlings on the windowsill in bulky wooden boxes - they are too inconvenient when transporting to the country. In addition, the delicate root system of young seedlings has time to grow into the roots of neighboring plants. The best solution in choosing containers for sowing is a seedling cup.
Shop buy or make your own?
Of course, production technologies do not stand still, and every hypermarket that respects its customers keeps in its assortment convenient containers for peat seedlings, which not only will not damage the root system of a young plant, but will simply dissolve in the soil. Why build cups yourself,when can i buy it ready made? The answer to this question is extremely simple. Experienced gardeners are accustomed to planting more than a dozen or even more than one hundred seeds of various vegetable and flower crops. Can you imagine how much it will take to invest in order to stock up on containers for all the seeds? Therefore, we will save and make peat cups for seedlings on our own. In the meantime, let's determine if there are any improvised materials that could become a container for seedlings.
Simple solutions from improvised materials
Even during the winter, gardeners collect plastic bottles, juice boxes, milk bags, sour cream containers. Literally everything is used: from paper to a dense greenhouse film. And the fantasy of gardeners knows no bounds. The film is sewn together with threads, chopped off with a stapler, wound in several layers. There is another simplest way to design containers. Two-liter bottles of drinks are cut at the right height and turned into a container for planting. Plastic cups for seedlings, made in such a simple way, have one small minus. Nevertheless, when transplanting, the root system will have to be disturbed a little. Painlessly, only the excavation of those plants that, during the time spent on the windowsill, did not have time to acquire long and strong roots.
Making paper cups for seedlings
Some plants are so capricious that they do not withstand transplantation, for a long timeget sick and don't survive well. As a result, while the seedling is acclimatizing in a new place, the precious time allotted for the growth and development of fruits will be lost. Therefore, we will make cups for seedlings from paper. During the winter, you can collect unnecessary newspapers. Pressed pulp obtained from recycled materials is used for printing publications. It will easily rot in the garden, serving as food for omnivorous earthworms.
Cut newspapers into pieces 10x30 cm. Newspaper sheets are quite thin, and in order for the process to go faster, you can fold them in half or three. We take an ordinary glass and wrap it with the resulting blanks in several layers. We leave a small protrusion, which will later be needed to form the bottom. Now we dip the bottom edge of the paper in a small amount of glue and wrinkle it well, forming the bottom and fixing it tightly at the bottom of the glass. We press down the newspaper blank with a glass and let the glue dry. We repeat this simple manipulation as many times as we plan to receive blanks. Paper cups for seedlings are ready! Now they can be put away in the pantry until the sowing time.
Peat container for planting
If we are not sure about the density of newspaper sheets, then we can use a more sophisticated technology for manufacturing a landing tank. A peat cup will bring even more benefits to a painlessly transplanted plant. After all, it, dissolving in the soil, actually becomes a good fertilizer. You can make peat containers under your own order. Wewe will determine the required dimensions of the cups ourselves and adjust the conical steel billet for them. We take into account the fact that in order to obtain an earlier harvest, it is necessary to sow the seeds in a spacious spacious container. The root system will develop well in it, the transplant will be painless, and the plant will immediately be able to start fruiting.
To make a peat cup for seedlings, we need:
- steel cone shape of required size;
- blank for forming cups;
- circle with rod.
Composition of the nutrient mixture
Having found all the components of the form for the design of future cups, we proceed to the manufacture of the peat base. We will need the following proportions: 50% peat, 40% cow manure and 10% black soil. Instead of black soil, you can use any other fatty soil. Mix well and add azotobacterin, phosphorobacterin and water to the composition. The mixture should be quite thick in consistency.
Responsible manufacturing step
To begin with, let's lower a circle with a pin to the bottom of a steel glass and fill it with the prepared peat mixture to a thickness of 2 cm. We thoroughly tamp the future bottom with a blank. Now, without removing it, we will fill the solution along the edges, filling the entire gap between the steel glass and the blank. A glass for seedlings will not dry out if the mixture is immediately carefully tamped when pouring. The blank can be immediately removed as soon as the peat composition fills the voids up to the very top. It's not scary if the insert isdifficult to remove, it can be slightly rocked from side to side. Now it remains to carefully pull the rod and remove the finished glass.
Time to experiment
Not all peat cups for seedlings are of perfect quality the first time. Sometimes home-made containers are able to disintegrate and dry out - perhaps the point is the insufficient density of the mixture. Sometimes too dense and hard products are obtained, which are difficult to dissolve in the ground during planting. The necessary skill and flair will surely come, even if it requires multiple repetitions.
Polyethylene seedling cup
To make a container with a height of 10 cm and a diameter of 7 cm, you will need a piece of dense film measuring 33x15 cm. We find or cut out a rectangular bar to fit the size of the future cup. In two faces of the bar responsible for the bottom, we make grooves in such a way that a stapler is placed in them. We cut polyethylene blanks and proceed to the design of the landing container. Then we wrap the film blank around a wooden bar and fix it with a stapler and 5 staples. With two of them from above and below we fix the side face, and with the rest we form the bottom, folding the ends of the film with an envelope. It's okay if more staples go to the bottom. In this way, cups of various sizes can be modeled.
Conclusion
Welearned a lot about how to make seedling cups. Of course, peat or paper containers seem to be the best solution compared to homemade polyethylene glasses. The idea of planting plants in the ground along with a natural glass that dissolves with water in the soil was revolutionary at one time. But it is up to gardeners to decide which of the presented methods for making containers for seedlings is the most acceptable for them. After all, not everyone will be able to find steel blanks for peat cups, and not everyone will have enough time and patience for painstaking work with glue and paper. Therefore, making cups for seedlings is a purely individual matter.
Perhaps you will use the proven method and sow the seeds in disposable plastic containers, besides, they perfectly show the condition of the root system and the degree of soil shedding. Also, this container can be used multiple times. Whichever container you choose for sowing seeds, we wish you a rich harvest!
