I Have Started the Garden!

I will fully admit it.  I am a total stalker of Mavis Butterfield.  Her couponing and on-line deals are great, but it's her garden I totally covet.  And the fact she lives in Washington.  I kinda covet that too.  And she has chickens.  I want some of those too.  So, it's pretty much out there now.  I am a sinner and totally want things that other people have.

Last week, she did a post on making newspaper pots for your seedlings, and she used this awesome pot maker.  And me, wanting to be like Mavis, could see no other option than getting my hands on one of those, so I could have newspaper pots, just. like. her!  I just couldn't take it anymore, after weeks and weeks of staring at all the seeds on my wish list, this morning after a run with my friends, I purposefully drove home in a way so that I drove by a particular store.  A particular store I knew sold Botanical Interests seeds.  Now, I know Mavis' garden is sponsored by Botanical Interests, but that's not why I wanted them.  I grew all of my garden last year from Botanical Interests seeds and I couldn't believe the difference in the plant.  The baby plants that the kids and I grew were so much bigger and healthier than when we grew them from Burpee seeds or whatever kind they sold at Home Depot.  So I knew this year, I was totally getting those seeds again!  And they have lots of organic and heirloom and non-GMO seeds.  So you see, I am slightly my own person, just slightly....  While at the garden store I asked if they had one of those wooden newspaper pot maker thingys, and turns out, they did not.  So, I left dejected with my bag of seeds, wondering how in the world I was ever going to live up to Mavis Butterfield standards.
But. Oh. My. Gosh!  Look what I did leave with.  All these seeds!  Such potential in tiny little packets!

I totally didn't mean to buy all of these, but once in front of the seed display, it was like I was possessed, I couldn't stop.  I was a junky and these seeds were my fix.  And now with all these seeds, I am totally going to need a garden expansion.  Well, I guess I could choose to not plant the whole packet of seeds, but that just feels wrong.  How do you chose which seed is the best?  You must plant them all in order to determine their worth, right???  And you know what I'm most excited to try this year?  Quinoa!  It's real pretty and should be delicious!  Let's just hope I can keep a certain animal from nibbling on it...  And let's hope my garden survives while I'm gone half the summer again.  I heard that it is, yet again, going to be an exceptionally hot summer here...

So, once home and my hopes of actually being Mavis Butterfield with my super awesome wooden newspaper pot maker thingy dashed, my brain finally kicked into gear and of course there had to be another way to make them!  So, I googled it and came across these instructions.  And I made some! 

I used a can of RoTel to wrap them around because it was a skinnier can.  And I'm thinking of trying to make a smaller version for some other seeds.  But I really wanted to just do a few and test it out and see how well the newspaper holds up over the next couple months.  Because the theory is that you just open the bottom of the pot and plant your baby plant and the newspaper pot directly in the garden and the newspaper then breaks down.  I've tried those compostable pots before and they just never worked out, they never quite break down once in the garden.  But newspaper seems far more wimpy, it will just be whether or not it keeps it's shape and doesn't completely collapse on me before it's time to transplant out to the garden!  Let's hope not, because I filled them up with dirt and then stuck some tomato seeds in there.

Grow little seeds, grow!