Toilet Roll Seed Starters

Here is everything you will need. Empty toilet roll tubes, some compost, seeds of your choice and a tub or plate for them to sit in/on.

I chose to cut my tubes in half to save compost. You don't have to do this- it will work just the same with full sized toilet roll tubes.

Once all my toilet roll tubes were cut in half, I slotted them into my tub. You can do as many as will fit, or as few as you want :-)

Now it's time to fill up your tubes with compost. Press the compost down gently as you go, so that the tubes are around 3/4 filled with compost. Don't push down so hard that the compost is compacted- think of the tiny seedlings' roots in coming weeks! :-)

So once all the tubes are filled with compost you'll have something that looks like this. Now you're ready for seeds!

Here I'm adding borage seeds (see my previous tutorial for harvesting borage seeds). These are my own borage seeds harvested last autumn. I put 1 seed each in 6 of the tubes. I then added some petunia and viola seeds to the other 12 tubes. What you sow really is up to you- tomatoes, cucumbers, sunflowers....whatever you like!

Once you've added the seeds to all of your tubes, give them a light watering with a sprinkler attachment watering can/hose.

And there you have it! Low waste, no cost seed starters! The best bit??? Once the seedlings have sprouted, theres no need to struggle and mess about trying to transfer the plant- simply put the cardboard tube into the plant's new pot and it will rot away and become part of the compost, not affecting growth at all :-)