Starting a mini nursery!

Homemade Seedling Tray

Since in average sized houses like ours in Delhi, soil and pots are a luxury, its better to play with lesser soil first before shifting the seedlings to bigger pots. While going through many websites I hopped upon the idea of seedling trays. Before I set up my own seedling tray I was working on my seedlings in half cut 2l coke bottles, which was messy of course- 1 or two seedlings getting lost and found in small messed up rooms over and over again. I hadn't been lucky enough to see seedling trays in a few great of nurseries in Delhi, but was lucky enough to find a big tray lying on the top of our old unused TV and a long piece of sponge from a sofa makeover session a couple of months back. So I built one.

Kidney Bean Seedling- about 2 weeks old

My seedling tray has space for 15. Each square that I cut in the sponge is 3 inches in length. 500ml Soft drink bottles fit just as good as beer cans. Later on I figured why half cut beer cans are far far better than coke bottles. Bottles are funky shaped by the bottoms, they really mess up the roots of seedlings while transferring them in pots. Beer cans, on the other hand, are straight cylindrical in shape so the whole plant comes out with no damage in a single shake. And of course, if the tin cans can hold beer for years, they will surely have no problems with just a little wet soil. Although how drunk do the plants become in beer cans- I am not sure!

Seedling trays help in keeping an eye on all the seedlings at the same time and of course, making it easier to organize your kid plants. I had 6 beer cans when I made my seedling tray. Of course, I had loads of empty beer cans in the store but before the idea of beer cans struck me, I had already cut many soft drink bottles. But then on, I decided, beer cans and beer cans only! They are very easy on the roots of the seedlings.