DIY Seed Pods

It's beyond time to get those indoor starter seeds going. We have several starts but we just keep adding more and more. Why? It's fun. I go bonkers with the seed catalog and I'm not entirely confident of my partial green thumb. So we keep making more seed pods and planting more seeds. The children really enjoy this part. Helping make the pods, planting the seeds and watching them grow are all great teaching tools! Here's our favorite way to make seed pods:

I have tried a few different methods on what to use for containers when starting seeds. Pretty much anything will work as long as it has adequate drainage. Here are a few things I’ve tried:

Empty soup cans or yogurt containers (with drainage holes punched in the bottom)

Egg cartons

Egg shells

Newspaper pods

This year I used egg cartons and newspaper pods.

Egg cartons are easy because they don’t require much preparation. I just cut the lid off of the bottom portion and fill both halves with potting soil and add the seeds. If you use the cardboard cartons, you can cut off each portion and plant them directly into the ground and let the cardboard decompose.

Newspaper pods are a little more time consuming than the egg cartons but they provide more room for larger seedling plants. These pods are also great to plant directly into the ground, the newspaper decomposes making transplanting these little guys and easy task.

I realize there are many ways to create these little pods. The method we chose seemed to be the easiest for the farm children to handle. Last time I made these pods, I put on a nice long movie while I made them. I was pod making for a few nights. This time, with more grown up farm children, we made our whole supply in about thirty minutes! Yay, for all those extra hands!

Here’s how we did it: