Mark's Sussex Allotment: Making Paper Pots

Evening All,

I thought I'd do a quick piece on making paper pots for growing parsnips. They are also great for growing pretty much anything, but they work particularly well for parsnips, as they are one of the few vegetables that cannot successfully be transplanted.

The reason is, if you try transplanting a root vegetable like a carrot or a parsnip. The process of moving them, is likely to, and more often than not, will, actually damage the root, and cause it to fork. Forked parsnips, are almost inedible, because they are almost rock hard and extremely chewy, making them unusable.

So, I grow them in fully biodegradable paper pots, or toilet rolls. Last year, I used newspaper, but this year, I am trying toilet rolls.

Basically, all I do, is get a used toilet roll.

At one end, make 4 slits about 1 inch long, evening spaced apart, all the way round.

Then fold the four pieces in to cover the bottom of the pot. This doesn't have to be perfect, or folded extremely tightly. So it should now look something like this.