Roll Your Own - Flowerpots!

You will need:

• sheets of newspaper - try to find sheets that are mainly black & white as there may be chemical problems with coloured inks, although most now are vegetable based.
• 2 straight-sided cylindrical containers, one slightly bigger than the other so that they will "nest". I use a child's acrylic glass for the inside one and a clean empty catfood tin for the outside. Take a full sheet of tabloid newspaper, i.e. 2 pages, and fold in half lengthways, giving you a rectangle slightly smaller than a sheet of A4, four thicknesses. Place the open end of the larger container on the longer side of the newspaper rectangle about one-third of the way across, then roll the newspaper tightly round, forming a cylinder.

  becomes

  Tuck the top end gently down into the can, then push the smaller container down into it, ramming & twisting it home, then remove. Wriggle the pot gently off the container. Now you have your basic pot! They do keep their shape, even wet, and can simply be planted out with their contents, although I always tear the top down to level with the ground surface so as not to cause "wicking", where the exposed wet paper evaporates all the moisture up into the air & deprives the plant of water. You can easily make different sizes by varying the size of the containers & paper used, or even buy an inexpensive kit to do it for you.

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  © Copyright: Angela Corbet, 2001.