Paper pots

[dod]

Hobbit,
I made a few paper pot makers last year and found the pots to be OK. They tended to look fairly ropey, but held together just about OK. I did use a smal piece of masking tape on each of them to hold the "tube" together. Handling needs to be minimised. The main point I would make is that I think it is better to remove the paper pots as they are repotted, because the roots don't seem to like to grow through the paper. As I saw just planting the whole thing as one of their main advantages (less root disturbance) I am not sure that they are as good as they sound, because removing the paper might be more damaging to the roots than just removing them from a plastic pot. When planting them with the paper intact plants seemed to lag behind a bit, perhaps whilst the roots found a suitable hole in the paper pot. I am not decided whether or not I shall be using them again this year (although I probably will when I run out of pots).

[Alison]

As a total grow-your-own newb, I'm just gathering info and it seems from above that paper pots are good for
-pes, beans, beetroot
-not peppers (but maybe chillis?)
-Not courgettes (and therefore maybe not summer or winter squash?)

A lot of this depends on what size of pots you make. My little ones are absolutely perfect for peppers, chillies, tomatoes, aubergines etc but far too small for courgettes etc. Personally I think that beetroot is much better sowed direct in the ground, beans go in reuseable root trainers and peas either direct or in guttering (I sow FAR too many peas to sow them individually )

Hobbit,
I made a few paper pot makers last year and found the pots to be OK. They tended to look fairly ropey, but held together just about OK. I did use a smal piece of masking tape on each of them to hold the "tube" together. Handling needs to be minimised. The main point I would make is that I think it is better to remove the paper pots as they are repotted, because the roots don't seem to like to grow through the paper. As I saw just planting the whole thing as one of their main advantages (less root disturbance) I am not sure that they are as good as they sound, because removing the paper might be more damaging to the roots than just removing them from a plastic pot. When planting them with the paper intact plants seemed to lag behind a bit, perhaps whilst the roots found a suitable hole in the paper pot. I am not decided whether or not I shall be using them again this year (although I probably will when I run out of pots).

I find that by the time I'm potting on that the roots have almost always already started to come through the newspaper and have never had to pull the paper apart (defeats the object to me). Perhaps you've been using a higher quality of newspaper to me . I really only think that they work well for small pots as these hold together very well and don't need anything to hold them together. At the moment I've got 30 or 40 of them in my window sill propogator, where they'll stay until they have their first true leaves forming at which point the whole pot will be potted on into a 3" pot.