Taming and transplanting your Woolworth Discovery Garden

Miss Jane suggests that you replant with this ‘almost’ free hack. It will be free if you have some suitable soil for seedlings.

After the fun of getting amazing free stuff from the supermarket, and going home to open all those packets and make a mess in mum’s kitchen planting the seeds – what next?

If they grow – and they may not; it does require regular watering – you will have lots of seedlings that are growing well but not quite big enough to plant into the garden.

I knew that they were too little to be planted out in the big wide world so was hunting around for something to do in the interim. As I was dumping a load of recycling in my bin I hit on the answer. Egg cartons. Hastily retrieving these I set to work replanting the tiny but overcrowded seedlings.

I cut up the egg cartons so that the top became an extra tray underneath the scooped half. I am hoping that this will provide extra drainage/water retention. I was also lucky that two eggs cartons, which is all that I was able to salvage, exactly fitted my baking tray. (No roasts for the next few weeks)

I happened to have some potting mix available but any fine crumbly soil will do. Carefully pull apart the seedling boxes and transplant into the egg cartons. Make sure you mark which cup holds what type of plant and then water your new seedlings.

When the seedling grow bigger my plan is to cut each individual cup from the egg carton and plant it straight into the ground – thinking that the egg carton will breakdown.

But – it is clear from the way the two different egg cartons reacted to water – one is straight cardboard, the other has some ingredient which makes it very water resistant – it may not breakdown fast enough.

PS: I will update this post with a photo in a week or two so that you can check the progress of my new radishes and beetroots.