Have you seen this?

Newspaper cell packs! I thought this was pretty cool :~) It may have been discussed here before but I'll post the http://www.rebeccasgarden.com/howto/items/98cell01.html anyway.

Lana

I tried this, couldn't quite get the 'hang' of it.

I made these one year and put a bunch of transplants in them. Hate to say so, but I had a lot of problems with mold in humid old Cincy. I know other people had great success with them and loved them.

Hmmm, it's pretty humid here too :~(

Lana

Every year, I make newspaper pots with my "Pot Maker". It is similar to the soup can method. I plant peas & nasturtium in them, since they are so much kinder to their tender root systems. I merely unfold the bottoms of the paper pots and plant them. One can either leave the paper around the seedling or remove it. In our cool climate, the paper is slow to disintegrate. Peat pots are useless here, since they do not break down over the season.

I'm glad they work for you Weez since the peet pots don't. I think I'm going to try them.

Lana

I've made them too. They worked great for seedling that grew quickly and didn't need to stay in the house long. Beans, squash, cukes, melons.....

For seedling that needed a longer time indoors (maters, peppers, herbs....)not so much. The tomato plant pots disintergrated before plant out. It was a bit of mess although the plants were okay.

Chris

The newspaper pots really work well for those seedlings that have very tender root systems. If you live in warmer climates, these are probably direct sow crops, but here in the frozen north, we can gain a bit of time starting peas and nasturtiums indoors.

I used them last year for my tomato seedlings, and they worked very well. They can get moldy if there's not enough air circulation but it wasn't severe, and when I set them out to harden off, it cleared right up. They CAN fall apart after several weeks - Weezin's idea of using them for quick-growing annuals is a good one; six weeks for tomato seedlings was probably a bit long. But they did work.

I used a tomato paste can as a mold, and wrote the cultivar name on a strip of masking tape that held the seam together. A tiny piece of masking tape on the bottom to hold the pleated end together, and that was all it took :)

Go_Vols: I, too, had problems with mildew or mold when I packed them too closely together. If I place them 4 across in a flat, they don't seem to have a problem.