DIY seed propagator (made with Muji boxes and newspaper)

Spring is here and I'm excited to plant all the seeds I've been collecting over the past years.  I usually put seeds straight in soil and let them grow straight from there but that was when I grew plants indoors only. Now that I'm growing them outdoors, and trying out lots of different seeds, I thought I'd better start them off indoors, especially since I'll be sowing quite a lot. Plus the weather has been pretty bad with it snowing this late in March.

I've looked online and seen quite a few propagation kits. There are quite expensive for something made just out of plastic and so I decided to make my own using things around the home.  Although most propagator use transparent lids, I thought to try using translucent boxes from Muji since I had tons of them around and thought they would also look very neat to leave around the flat. 

I have used the toilet roll method of making little pots before in my mom's garden and they work great (as long as they don't stay too wet) and I like the recycling aspect of it and that the "pots" can be put directly into the ground after germination. But I haven't collected enough so I had to think of other solution. 

Newspapers were the answer since there are many free handouts on the journey back from work. My next step was to find a good design and instructions for an origami box. After a few trials, I decided on this garbage bin origami pattern that I found here.

A finished pot

Instruction pattern

They do take a while to make so in the future, I'll make a few each night while watching telly, otherwise it gets too tedious to make them all in one go.

Folded pots, ready to be used

But I'm pretty happy with them as they look good and feel sturdy. Exactly 6 columns of 4 rows, 24 pots per box, which is quite a prefect fit so nothing tips over and there's enough space if the pots expand a little.

A good fit

They can be stacked up neatly in a corner or on a shelf. I wonder what will germinate first out of the seeds I planted.

My DIY seed propagators all stacked and potted up

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