They go mouldy and can start to unroll but they work fine. I've only used them for sweet peas which need a deep root run.

This didn't work for me personally. The toilet paper rolls wicked moisture away and got moldy really quickly when I tried keeping them wet enough to avoid drying out. I was having mold/fungus issues in general (I think there was something in the house that spring) so I gave up but if you lived in a drier climate I could see it working for fast-growing stuff like squash or peas/beans that don't need an extended stay indoors.

Paper cups are, exactly, paper-made pots. They work great.

Paper cups are great if you do them right. Roll them tightly so they don't fall apart. Don't soak them in water, instead add water to the soil from the top. I also found that cutting the sides of the pots when planting was needed for the roots grow beyond the paper. Newspaper is stronger than you think!

No, don't plant the cups. Cut along the side with a scissors and extract the moist root ball. Cups that don't fall apart when watered won't fall apart that fast when they're buried. Roll newspaper? 8oz paper cups are a penny apiece. Hardest part about using them is pulling them out of the plastic sleeve you bought them in.

But making newspaper pots is recycling and no need for a plastic sleeve to throw away! Have you Texans heard of that? {LOL}.

Linda

We recycle all our plastic bags and newspaper. Have you folks heard of that? In the time that I save in not making umpteen newspaper cups, I can go out to our urban creek and pick up trash, and remove garden pests that I'd otherwise be hitting with pesticides. But I admit that one gets some touchy-feely gratification out of newspaper craftsmanship.

If talking about cups... I use and re-use a huge stack of red solo cups I got years ago for our wedding pot luck. There was a communication error and I asked them to bring cups for 50- and they thought 500! I like them better than the usual 3"? pots because they are deeper- nice for my tomatoes and peppers when I pot them up indoors as the last pot before moving outside. 7 years later and I still got tons of them, lol. Can't find plain paper cups around here, all of them have coatings.

I stopped using newspaper for making pots after a year or two because it was indeed a lot of fussing and time to make them. And utilize them to their best to be honest. I'm a lazy gardener. And just didn't work well for the kind of gardening I do. But an old wine bottle with a good divot in the bottom is an excellent size to make pots with- just saying.

I do recycle my newspapers into the garden. I save them up and when I need to lay down a smother layer under something, like a base under a new raised bed or compost cage, or a fresh layering in the walkways to throw wood mulch over.. It tends to take around a year to really fill up a paper grocery bag around here so we don't get much to begin with. But right handy compostable landscaping paper that keeps the weeds off surprisingly well for a short time and composts nice.

The solo cups are nice because they tend to be large. I just use 8 oz paper cups that I get when I do take-away coffee at my gym. But you need to plant out when the seedlings are just 3-4 inches tall. Solo cups are 9-16 oz, so you can grow larger seedlings.

I like this Origami paper pot - once you do a couple, it gets much faster. I use sale ads so my paper isn’t the exact same size, but it works. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kmwyyqGuNGo I don’t use TP rolls as they’d take too long to break down in the garden. I do make cuts all around the pot and rip the bottom at planting time. It’s summer dry here, so I have to be sure none of the paper pot is at the surface when I plant or it’ll wick moisture up from around the roots (even if they do grow through).

A li late to the party :)

but for other readers like myself who will fond this thread in the future:

while i have no experiece with using TP rolls (though was contemplating it recently), i do have to say that from having gone through 7 different types of peat type pots to start seeds, what ive learned is:

its probably just easier to use plastic multi cell trays or 2” nursery pots in the long term.

here are the issues:

1. some peat pots are really bad material and will grow horrible mold in matter of days. this will even affect the rate of growth though otherwise harmless.

2. other peat pots are sturdy and seem nice but your roots will suffocate as they will be too delicate to grow through and will get trapped in the walls.

3. jiffy pots so far are the only ones that are decent material and roots can grow through fine. however! aftee you repot into another size contaner ans roots grow out, on rhe second repotting the new roots are likely to tear off. the soil will not fuse with the peat pot and any soil that is on the bottom can break off along with all the new roots. also also, if you ever need to get to the roots or treat eat plant (lets say you have 2-4 seedlings per pot) you are pre much doomed to damage the root system.

so, the only time i would ever use peat pots is when after the seedlings grow, i would plants then never repot (outside or in a pot they wilk live on forever).

TP roll would allow roots to grow out the bottom, but it will not allow them to spread out horizontally which makes for long roots as opposed to a fanned out network like the top part of the plant. Also, all of the mold growing and slow bio-degratable elements are true.

Man, i think i just talked myself out of using TP rolls for seedlings.

Though, if no mold grows and the roots dont grow into the inner wall of the cardboard one thing could be useful:

you could then either cut off the roll OR push the plant out from the bottom becore planting the seedlings.

TP to start seeds? ....... No wonder there's a shortage...

Toilet paper rolls are handy for seedlings, but not to grow them in. I use them to protect seedlings from cutworms when they are planted out. Slice them in half, making two small circles, cut each circle, and staple the halves together to get a four-inch circle that can surround just-planted seedlings. I save toilet paper rolls for exactly this purpose. They are sturdy enough to last a few weeks, after which they just fall apart and degrade.

>"I do recycle my newspapers into the garden....composts nice" ___ Ok if almost all of the ink is black. Other inks are bad stuff.